


along the river

by andchaos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Sex, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:52:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in the deep south, Dean and Cas weather all the usual pangs of teenage love while combating all the aches that go with it, and some unconventional obstacles all their own.</p><p> </p><p>*Title of the chapters and the work as a whole from Jack Gilbert's poem, South:</p><p>In the small towns along the river<br/>nothing happens day after long day.<br/>Summer weeks stalled forever,<br/>and long marriages always the same.<br/>Lives with only emergencies, births,<br/>and fishing for excitement. Then a ship<br/>comes out of the mist. Or comes around<br/>the bend carefully one morning<br/>in the rain, past the pines and shrubs.<br/>Arrives on a hot fragrant night,<br/>grandly, all lit up. Gone two days<br/>later, leaving fury in its wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a ship comes out of the mist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erin (who never gets around to reading fanfiction anyway)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Erin+%28who+never+gets+around+to+reading+fanfiction+anyway%29).



> Technically, they're eighteen so everything's legal. Also, I know approximately zero things about the south and zero things about college in the 90s, so feel free to engage in gentle correction where necessary.

          It is three degrees outside, he can’t feel his toes, and his best friend is beautiful. This is all Dean knows, in the beginning.

          Shaking flecks of snow from her fiery hair, Charlie tugs furiously on the sleeve of Dean’s peacoat, gestures in the other direction with her free hand, and hisses, “Are you going to do it, Dean?”

          “I can’t,” he mutters, shrugging his arm free. “It’s not—they won’t—I can’t do it.” He won’t even meet her eyes, focusing instead on the snowfall above them, watching a few flakes spiral to the ground and tracking their progress all the while.

          “Why _not_?” she grouses, still watching him watch the precipitation tumbling around them.

          “Because who the fuck is going to accept it?” he snaps, finally turning to look at her, eyebrows drawn together. “Nobody’s gonna be okay with it, Charlie, okay? Nobody.”

          Refusing to rise to the bait, she just shakes her head and straightens her mittens, cool as ever. “I would,” she answers, totally nonchalant, as though that’s all that matters in the world.

          “Yeah, well, you’re the only one,” he mutters darkly, crossing his arms over his chest.

          “ _He_ would,” she offers, raising her eyebrows tantalizingly.

          “You don’t know that.”

          “Oh please, the only people completely oblivious to how disgustingly in love the pair of you are would be you two. So do me a favor and bite me.” She pauses, then adds thoughtfully, “Actually, bite him. That would be more productive.”

          He shoves her in the arm and groans, “Ugh, fuck, you’re disgusting,” turning away again to hide his face, which is reddening to a deeper shade than the cold alone could possibly trigger.

          Charlie rolls her eyes. “At least go say hi,” she insists, twirling a strand of hair around her finger; she’s been trying for at least three weeks to convince her hair to curl, but it stays as determinedly straight as ever. She pushes her glasses back into place instead, trying to catch Dean’s eyes despite how he turns way every time. “It’ll be weird if you don’t,” she half-whines, jostling him. “You’ve been friends for _years_. Like, besties. Tighter than we are.”

          “I haven’t seen him since I went off to university,” he gripes, “And I’m just supposed to go up to him and say, ‘Oh, good to see you, by the way, I’m in love with you’?”

          Charlie smirks and shakes her head again, clearly thinking that he’s completely hopeless. “You’re completely hopeless,” she informs him. “Just go and welcome him home. He’s been gone too, you know. That’s nearly four months to make up for.”

          He grimaces at her but follows the momentum of the shove she digs into his back as she hisses, _“Go,”_ crossing the street into the vacant playground. He finds himself completely unable to look up as he approaches. One hand clenches into a fist, the other rubs along the back of his neck, and he stares determinedly at the ground as he mutters, “Hiya, Cas.”

          Castiel looks up, expression drawn into one of surprise; the snow underfoot was evidently enough to mask the sound of his approach.

          “Dean!” he says, a wide smile creeping onto his face. It is blinding, brighter than the pure-white fluff around and above and beneath them. Dean takes another second to compose himself as Castiel continues, “I didn’t know you were back in Kansas!”

          “Just had finals two days ago,” he says, blushing again, very slightly. “I dropped by earlier, but your sister said you’d gone out.”

          “I went over to the library,” he says, pulling his beanie down further over his ears. “I left all my books in the dorm for break, and I wanted to finish studying the complete works of Jack Gilbert.”

          “Who?”

          “He’s a poet,” he says, shrugging, though there’s a shake to one of his legs that suggests his underlying excitement. “He’s my primary inspiration.”

          “Still writing, then?” asks Dean, running a hand through his own hair and somehow looking _up_ at him despite the multiple inches he had on him.

          “Yep,” says Cas proudly. “I’d love to show you sometime. If you want,” he adds, suddenly shy.

          “I’d love to,” says Dean, and he’s about to start to say something else when he notices that the slight tremor of Cas’s leg has spread to the rest of his body. “Are you cold?”

          Cas ducks his head as though this natural response to icy stimuli is somehow shameful. “A bit,” he admits.

          Dean nods and slings an arm around his shoulders, turning him and starting to walk so that Castiel has to follow. A glance to his left shows that Charlie has disappeared ; he then refocuses on the ground, trying to step around the areas where snow has piled highest so that his feet don’t sink too far into the settled drift. Castiel does the same, and for a moment there is silence as they maneuver their way onto the plowed street and thereafter can walk normally.

          “So how’s college been going?” asks Dean, hyperaware of his arm around Cas’s shoulders and wondering if it’s at all abnormal that he hasn’t removed it yet. Castiel isn’t protesting, but then his friend has always been strange, and his lack of upset does not necessarily advocate for the action’s legitimacy.

          “Very well,” says Castiel, oblivious to his anxiety. “I’m taking three different English courses, including a linguistics class. My professor’s very righteous and _extremely_ pretentious, but the material is interesting. Did you choose a major?”

          “Engineering,” he mutters self-consciously. “I mean, it’s not all sophisticated or whatever like you—”

          “That’s fantastic,” Cas interrupts, well-versed in his old friend’s self-deprecation. “You’ve always been magnificent at mechanics. Are you going to work at Bobby’s?”

          “I haven’t thought of that,” he says, mildly taken aback. “I guess, yeah. That makes sense.”

          They banter back and forth about school and the past few months apart until they reach town, which is empty except for a few cars that pass every five minutes or so, as well as the odd pedestrian. Dean immediately drops his arm from Cas’s shoulders. Castiel turns, curious, to look at him, and shivers  involuntarily again. Dean wants to pull him close, but as they pass the hardware store where he spent much of his past summers he sees the store clerk waving out at him and finds that he can’t. Cas shuffles a little closer, making the distance less prominent so that their hands brush with every step, and Dean finds his resolve wavering more.

          Silence persisted since they got into town, but after a few stores more, Castiel breaks it. “Are you still dating Lisa?” he asks, leaning further into him.

          “No,” he says softly, “We broke up in October.”

          After checking the empty street, he reaches up to brush snow from Cas’s hair. Cas turns to him, making his job harder but more pleasant, and hums contentedly until he drops his hand. They stare at each other until Dean sees someone turn the corner toward them in his peripherals, at which point he wraps his arms around his own torso and looks ahead, pretending that he can’t see the way Cas’s face falls slightly.

          They are mostly silent the rest of the way back to Cas’s house, occasionally passing a pointless comment to the other without any real conviction to hold a conversation. The lights are off in all the windows as they amble up the front walk, each reluctant to go. As Cas slides his key into the front door and crosses the threshold, leaning sideways against the frame, Dean idles on the top step, marking up the welcome mat with old dirt and clumps of snow stuck between the whorls on the bottom of his shoes. Cas just watches him, attuned as ever, aware of the words lingering on the tip of Dean’s tongue but unsure if he’ll swallow or spit them.

          “Cas—” he starts, then stops again. He knows what he wants to say, can imagine the reactions of everyone he knows: Cas’s surprise, Charlie’s glee, his mother’s calm smile, his brother’s disgusted yet satisfied expression, his father’s displeasure, his own grin if all goes well. He thinks of the ways to phrase it: _I love you, I want you, I’ve missed you, I need you._ They all feel like acid in his mouth, and he longs to expel the poison burning its way down his throat. “It’s good to see you, man.”

          Cas’s expectant look falters, then fades. He nods once, sharp, and reaches for the doorknob.

          “You too, Dean,” he says quietly, stepping back to give the door room to swing shut. “I’ll see you around.”

 

“What. The. _Fuck_.”

          Charlie slams her mug of coffee down, ignoring the scandalized mutterings of their fellow patrons, too busy glaring at Dean to bother with strangers’ hurt feelings.

          “I know, I know!” Dean groans, leaning back in his chair and pressing his hands over his face. “I chickened out! I’m an idiot!”

          “Yeah, you are!” she shouts, reaching across the table to punch him in the shoulder.

          He makes a noise of protest and rubs at the point of contact, muttering obscenities that she can barely distinguish while she rolls her eyes and instructs that he stop being such a wimp. He trails off into a more indistinct brand of grumbling while Charlie just rolls her eyes and drinks more coffee, waiting for him to be done complaining so that she can continue belittling him.

          “Well, anyway,” he sighs finally, stealing her mug and taking a sip. “That was a bust, so—”

          “Woah, hold on,” she cuts him off, sitting up and waving her hands around in agitation. “We are _not_ giving up! How long have you been in love with this g—”

          _“Charlie,”_ he hisses, flicking his gaze around at the nearest tables, with several occupants glancing back.

          “This, uhm, girl,” she hastily amends, having the grace to look slightly abashed.

          Dean exhales heavily at the close call, slumping back in his chair and passing the coffee back across the table. “I don’t even know, Charlie, it’s been years. We met when we were, what, _seven_? Been in love since I was maybe nine and known it since I was maybe fourteen and I saw h— _her_ kissing another guy behind the high school. Rest is untold history.”

          Her expression softened significantly, the fight leaving her. “I’m sorry, Dean,” Charlie says gently, laying her hand over his on the tabletop. “I know this sucks. But if you want anything to change—”

          “I know, I know. I gotta fix it up myself.”

          “Damn straight,” she says, tone a little lighter and more teasing. Then she picks up her mug and sips from it, and sputters all over the table.

          “What the _fuck_ did you put in this?” Charlie hisses, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “Fuck!”

          “Be cool,” he mutters, looking around again. “Come on, let’s go.”

          After they stand and shrug their jackets back on, he grabs the spiked coffee and follows her out into the cold. The blizzard stopped a few hours ago but left behind about twenty clear inches of snow, and they both pull their scarves higher over their faces as they trudge out into the white void, passing the Irish coffee back and forth between them as they walk.

          “How’re you and Dorothy?” asks Dean, swigging more coffee and hiccupping slightly. He shoves it back in her hand and reaches for his flask instead, preferring to go straight for the source since he’s the only one who didn’t mind not having it mixed.

          “Just peachy,” she says, smacking her lips.

          Honestly, Dean’s a little jealous of his friend, who’s the only non-closeted LGBT friend he knows from high school. Massachusetts is more accepting than the south, of course, but he still wishes he could be out and as happy as his friend and her girlfriend.

          “Cas!” Charlie calls suddenly, and Dean looks up hurriedly, shoving the flask back into one of his inner pockets.

          He turns around from where he’s crossing in front of them, eyebrows raising. “Oh, Charlie,” he says, doubling back to greet them. “Hello, Dean,” he adds, nodding at him.

          “Cas, what the fuck, man,” says Dean, grinning at him. “Are you in boat shoes? There’s like a million feet of snow out here.”

          “I stayed over Bartholomew’s last night,” he admits. “I didn’t know until I left this morning.”

          “I’m heading home, if you want to join us,” Charlie offers blithely. Cas shrugs and falls into step on Dean’s other side.

          To his credit, Dean tries _really_ hard not to make Charlie the third wheel on the way to her place, for all that she attempts to blend seamlessly into the background. She waves goodbye at the end of her drive instead of making them walk her to her door, insisting that she can brave the icy blacktop herself. They wave at her until she gets inside, and she returns the gesture just before she shuts the door, but not before winking at them through the crack. Dean flushes while Cas just tilts his head in confusion. The last image they have is of her snickering face before Dean pulls him away by the arm, refusing to answer his numerous questions and looking at the ground all the while.

          They make it back to town in under twenty minutes because they run, grabbing at each others’ coats and gloves when one of them falls behind. They duck into a near-empty grocery store—everyone must have stocked up before the snowfall and are currently hiding out in their safe, warm homes—and stop just inside the entryway, far enough away that they can’t feel the wind when the door opens. After catching their breath, they meander back further into the store, and a few of the cashiers that grew up with them greet them as they pass. Dean tries and fails not to think dark, bitter thoughts about them when he considers how different their attitudes would probably be if they knew how he feels about the boy walking beside him, if they knew how he wants to slip his hand into his and kiss him beside the frozen foods. He manages a satisfactory smile in return as they wend down the aisles, without true destination but probably heading toward the candy section, as Castiel has a thing for M&Ms.

          Once he’s restocked his sweets collection, they wander back toward the outside, wondering where to go next. They dither beside the exit, contemplating options and leaning against the wall. After a few suggestions, Dean leans close to him, breath tickling his skin, lips close enough to feel the strands of hair surrounding Castiel’s ear.

          “I’ve got my flask,” he whispers, staring through the window to scout out locations to loiter. “If we find a place to go we can finish it off. It’s already half done. The rest is yours if you think of someplace to go.”

          Castiel tenses oddly, turning toward him without backing up so that they are hovering close together—too close together for a public arena, and although no one is in sight, anyone could walk out and see them.

          “There’s always The Giving Tree,” he murmurs, referring to the multi-branched leviathan between the local concert venue and the abandoned warehouse where the kids like to smoke pot and play Never Have I Ever.

          “Sounds perfect.”

          They blink at each other for a few seconds, each hovering, until Dean suddenly shakes his head and pulls back. Cas’s dejected expression does nothing to lessen the heavy anchor that appears to have dropped into Dean’s stomach, and even though he swears to lay off he can’t resist undoing the scarf from around himself and shuffling back into Cas’s space, throwing it around his neck instead, standing so close as he ties it that he can feel the jeans over their thighs rubbing together.

          “Let’s go,” he breathes when he’s done, stepping back. Cas nods silently and walks beside him out the door and back through the snow. Dean catches the slightest glimpse of a smile right before Cas pulls the scarf up to his nose.

          They end up huddling inside the warehouse, which is still cold because of all the broken windows but significantly less frosty than actually sitting outside. They retreat to the farthest corner of the room, which is mercifully empty due to the early hour, and once they settle in with their jackets sprawled across their laps as a makeshift blanket, Dean passes Cas the flask and watches him take three consecutive shots in a row before capping it again. The way his eyes track the movement of his throat is almost obsessive, and he actively stops himself from doing anything stupid.

          “Tell me a secret,” says Cas, leaning back against the wall and setting the flask on the ground between them.

          “Why?” Dean half-laughs through the short word.

          “I don’t know, it fits in the spirit of the place,” he answers, reaching for another drink. “People play all kinds of the same truth games here. So. Play with me.”

          He shouldn’t. Regret is written all over the mere suggestion. “When I was little, I once was convinced for an entire year that Sam was a werewolf because he got sick once a month for five months in a row. Turns out his immune system was just shitty.”

          Cas laughs. “That’s not a secret, Dean, that’s the first thing you ever said to me. You were hiding in my mother’s bushes when I found you, and you said you were scouting out your own brother so that you could prove that he had lycanthropy.”

          Soon Dean’s laughter joins Castiel’s, ringing loudly through the empty room and blocking out the wind. The storm started up again earlier, laying a dusting of white near the holes in the walls, far away from the boys.

          “Your turn,” says Dean, reaching for the alcohol.

          Cas shrugs and slides further down the wall, laying his head on Dean’s shoulder. “I don’t have any secrets. You go again, that one wasn’t even real. I already knew that.”

          “Alright,” he sighs, slamming his head back onto the wall behind him and fiddling with the flask in his hands. “What do you want to know?”

          “I don’t know,” he murmurs, sounding sleepy. “You said you broke up with Lisa. What have you been doing since her?”

          “No one,” he says honestly. “I—I like this—uhm, I like someone, but I don’t—I don’t think it would work out.”

          “Why not?” Cas pushes himself back to a sitting position, rounding to face him with an intensity that would be almost startling if Cas hadn’t always exuded this veracity. “Have you talked to her? Where do you know her from?”

          “Nothing. Nowhere. Awhile.”

          “That was very eloquent, Dean. I congratulate you,” drawls Cas, snatching the flask back from him and taking another sip.

          “It wouldn’t work out,” he repeats, harsher.

          “Come on, Dean,” Cas says, rolling his eyes and shoving him in the arm. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that this is her?”

          “What do you mean?”

          “Are you trying to tell me,” he says, voice laced with undertones of thunder, “That some girl is refusing to date you? That something about the great allure that is Dean Winchester, the almighty righteous man that I have known for eleven years, is insufficient to catch this girl’s attention?”

          Dean shakes his head. “There’re some bigger complications, Cas.”

          “Like what?” he presses, jabbing him in the ribs, then grabbing his arm and shaking him. “Come on, Dean, tell me.”

          Dean slinks away from his touch, unable to meet his ever-persistent gaze. “Do you want to have a snowball fight?” he asks, scrambling to get to his feet and catching up his coat. “The snow should pack well. Come on, while it’s still light out.”

          He starts to walk away, knowing Castiel will follow, and he does, jumping to his feet and throwing his coat over his arm even as he persists in his questions. Dean ignores him all the way through and back outside, only turning around after he packs a handful of snow so that he can pelt it at Castiel, who manages to stop staring up at the sky with his mouth open and his tongue out long enough to dodge Dean’s throw. Laughing, he packs his own and sends it rocketing back, hitting Dean square in the chest so that several flecks drip down the front of his shirt and he shouts out, throwing another and another until neither of them are dodging anymore, both merely packing and throwing from the same crouched position on the ground while getting repeatedly hit with snowballs. Finally, Cas gets a shot directly in Dean’s face, and after sputtering and wiping off what he can, Dean launches himself across the short distance and tackles Cas into the snow, wrestling him down until he is as cold as Dean is. He lays breathless and unmoving, with his arms flat on either side of his head, Dean sitting firmly on his abdomen, the storm around them blowing more cold flakes against their exposed faces and necks and hands. Dean’s fingers creep up Cas’s palms and he leans close enough to be heard over the gale and shouts, “I win!”

          Cas’s scowl is offset by the violent tremor of his body, which Dean can feel against his own slightly quavering form in the places where they are pressed together. His teeth chatter as he grumbles, “I don’t think this is about winning, Dean.”

          “Oh yeah?” he whispers, smirking, pushing closer. Pushing his luck. “Are you saying that because you mean it, or because you’re the one ass first in the snow right now?”

          “Definitely the first one.” Cas sounds a little breathless, hands curling as far as they can. His nails dig into the backs of Dean’s fingers.

          “Lying’s a sin, little angel boy,” Dean taunts, pinning his wrists deeper into the drift. “Extremely bad karma.”

          “I’m not lying,” Cas insists, drawing his knees up a little as though to generate or conserve some body heat. He stops when they knock into Dean’s back, and he doesn’t move.

          “Tell the truth,” murmurs Dean, so close he can see the snow sticking to Cas’s eyelashes. “Say it. Tell me that you lost.”

          “I don’t lose,” says Castiel, mouth twitching with repressed enjoyment. “Ever.”

          “You just did.” They’re so close that Dean can feel the phantom touch of his skin when he speaks.

          “Never,” Cas intones insistently, his expression a challenge.

          “Fuck you,” Dean laughs, face alight with joy. Cas just stares up at him, expression unchanging, and their eyes flick between each others’ for a few seconds before his lips crash down on Cas’s, all electrical heat that almost burns in stark contrast to the frost spiraling around them.

          He pulls back after a few seconds, when what he’s done really registers in his head and he realizes that he’s made a huge fucking mistake and he’s a complete idiot and he’s freaking out when he stands back up and pulls Cas up beside him, one frozen hand wrapped around another.

          “Fuck,” Dean mutters, “Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Cas, I don’t know why I did that, please don’t say anything—”

          “Shut the fuck up, Dean,” says Cas, fisting both hands in Dean’s jacket and pulling him close enough to kiss again.

          Cas leads him backwards, back into the warehouse. Kissing while walking is difficult, but they do so in every available moment, stumbling back to their corner in between desperate open-mouthed kisses and the kicking off of shoes and toeing out of socks. Cas shoves Dean’s coat off his shoulders as soon as his back hits the wall, his cold fingers pressing into the skin of his neck and collar. Dean gasps against the temperature of the touch, but doesn’t pull back; with one hand, he pulls him close by the belt loops on his jeans, so that he can tear off his scarf and coat with the other. Cas arches against him when Dean doesn’t press him back, needing the alignment of their bodies.

          Dean’s mouth tracks to his neck when Cas attempts to speak, so that he has the room to pant out, “What about the girl—what happened to the girl you liked?”

          “Did I ever say it was a girl?” Dean growls, ripping Castiel’s fitted sweater over his head. “Clearly—I’m not—just into—girls,” he adds in the spaces between bruising his neck and chest with his mouth.

          “I didn’t know,” Cas breathes. “Damn it, Dean.”

          Cas deftly pulls Dean’s Henley off, somehow convincing Dean to draw away from him long enough to unclothe him. Their mouths meet again in fierce, frantic need, both of them fighting over hands and arms while they try to undo each other’s jeans. Cas manages it first, then cups Dean’s face for better leverage while Dean tries to step out of his pants. He trips, driving Cas back against the wall, and Cas laughs while Dean curses and properly pulls off his jeans, his other hand pressed against the wall beside Cas’s head. When he’s done, Dean wraps an arm around Cas’s waist and his free hand behind Cas’s head, keeping him steady while he lowers him to the floor on top of their discarded jackets. Cas grabs onto Dean’s shoulders for balance, making sure their mouths never separate while Dean focuses on getting them to the ground safely.

          He pauses, hovering above his best friend, raking a hand through his wet hair. He wants to say something, perhaps, but doesn’t know what; Cas makes an irritated noise and kisses him possessively again, nipping admonishingly at his bottom lip when he doesn’t respond immediately. But Castiel is red-cheeked and shivering and offering him infinite miles of skin to touch, and for a moment he can’t do anything but appreciate this gift laid out beneath him.

          Cas tips his head back and repeats his name desperately until he refocuses and leans down to claim, licking along his jawline and down, pressing kisses and sinking bites into his bared throat. He knows, even through his muddled head, that he will not be able to flaunt Castiel later, so he must mark now, a signal of possession that no one will be able to decode. Something just for Castiel, afterwards, when he’s standing alone with a mirror and dragging fingertips along the bruise, imagining Dean’s teeth.

          Dean slowly makes his way down Cas’s body, with too many detours to count, until finally Cas must unlink the arms wrapped around Dean’s body so that Dean can settle between his legs and undress him the rest of the way, then move back up.

          “You are so beautiful,” Dean breathes, pressing his lips to his hip. “Stunning,” he murmurs, kissing the place where the bottom of his ribs creates a small bump underneath his skin. “Gorgeous,” he whispers, lips hovering a hairsbreadth above Castiel’s.

          Cas is the one to close the distance, one hand fisted in the hair in back of Dean’s head. Dean kisses him back hard, deep, and lifts off of him while pulling him up so that they are half-kneeling, half-sitting in front of each other. Dean sits back onto his ankles and pulls Cas closer so that he is almost on his lap, knees straddling Dean’s as he leans up to kiss him.

          “I love you, Dean,” Cas gasps, as Dean hitches his knees around his waist and lays him back down. His sentence ends in a moan as their naked hips slide together. Dean tugs on his bottom lip and then slips his tongue into Cas’s mouth, alongside his, cutting him off.

          “I love you too, Cas, fuck,” he mutters when he pulls away for a second, while Cas focuses on maintaining the rhythm of their bodies. “Oh god, come on.” He pauses to kiss him again before panting out, “I’ve loved you for years, you know that? I didn’t say anything...I saw you, behind the school, with Meg Masters. I didn’t think—”

          “I want you,” Cas mumbles against his lips. “I only want you.” His hands scrabble at Dean’s waist, trying to pull him closer, but they already closed the remaining spaces between them, and it’s just skin on skin, like galaxies colliding.

          “Me too.  I wish—but I don’t have—”

          “Me neither,” he hisses out when he can. “Some other time, Dean.”

          Dean concurs, but he isn’t sure if the verbal assent is lost somewhere in the curve of Cas’s neck where he is nuzzling into as he continues grinding their hips together, lost in the friction between their bare cocks and the electricity crackling off of every point of contact between them and the scent of him buried deep in the crook of his neck, a concentrated pool of pheromones just for Dean.

          Cas comes with a gasp and a tug of his hair, head thrown back, and Dean shifts to watch him better. He is beautiful, like an array of light, his noises addictive like caramel acoustic guitar. Dean helps him through it, continuing the movement until he slumps back flat onto the floor. After a few more labored breaths, Cas rolls them over, slipping a hand between their bodies and wrapping it around Dean. He keeps his distance, watching the heavy rise and fall of his chest as Dean comes with a groan.

          Without giving him time to recover, Cas pulls him up to slump against the wall, both of them a mess. Dean pants in time to Cas’s heavy breathing, head on his shoulder, feeling his heart beat beneath his skin. Dean noses at the spot beneath his ear, lazily, needy, kissing absently here and there while they both calm down.

          Still shivering, Cas reaches for his jacket and pulls it over the both of them, and Dean wants to pull his clothes back on but is too comfortable to do so. After a few minutes of silence, Castiel begins to get dressed, throwing Dean his clothes as he sorts through the pile for his own belongings. When they put on everything except their jackets, Dean grabs Cas’s sleeve until he crawls back over to him and encircles him with one arm. Dean scoots closer and slumps into him, more and more until he is laying with his head on Cas’s lap, Cas making lazy strokes through his hair and humming some tune that Dean doesn’t recognize. Finally Cas breaks the calm.

          “You said you loved me,” says Cas, causing Dean to turn his head and blink up at him. “You said you’ve loved me for years.”

          “Yeah?”

          “Since when?” He doesn’t manage to keep the smile from either his face or his voice. “How long have you been in love with me?”

          “Years. Like, maybe fifteen years.”

          “Dean!” Cas laughs, removing his hands from his head to swat at his chest. “You’ve only known me for eleven years!”

          Dean grins up at him and sits up, cradling his face and kissing him. “Okay, eleven years then,” he amends, still anchoring him in place as he kisses him again. “Can’t I just tell you how much I love you now?” he asked, kissing his forehead. “’Cause I do.” His temple. “I love you.” The tip of his nose. “I love you.” His mouth again.

          “Stop being cute, that was a serious question!” Cas protests, before Dean kisses him again. “Dean!”

          Dean kisses him again and again, light and easy around Cas’s smile until Cas tugs on the front of his shirt and he deepens it a little. Cas is still half-laughing while Dean leans over him, their hands twined together on the floor, and Dean is extremely focused on the fusion of their mouths, so much so that he doesn’t notice how dark it has gotten outside, the time of day paired with the storm.

          They jump apart when someone— _two_ someones—crash through the front door, laughing and holding hands and stumbling. The girl, her dark hair braided back, is swinging a nearly empty bottle of Bacardi, and the boy reaches down to grab it from her. He takes a swig just as they spot the two boys in the corner, who don’t have the time to pull apart their hands or make some sort of respectable distance between their bodies, before they are noticed.

          “Well, fuck me blind!” the boy slurs, letting go of the girl as he staggers closer. “What do we have here?”

          Cas blushes as he gets to his feet. Dean follows close after, swinging his jacket back over his shoulder, just as Cas steps forward a few paces and shouts, “None of your business, assbutt. But don’t puke your homophobic concerns on us before you even vomit up your alcohol, okay? We’re going.”

          He grabs Dean’s hand and starts to leave, but as he goes to walk around the boy, he shoves at Cas’s chest and he trips backward. Dean steadies him and steps in front of him protectively.

          “Fuck off,” he snaps, hands balling into fists.

          The girl comes forward, snatching her bottle back and drinking more. She wipes her mouth and laughs harshly. “We should probably go, Rafe. Don’t want to stay in here where these fucking _fags_ have been screwing. God knows what it’s crawling with.”

          Dean generally has a strict don’t-hit-girls policy, but he’s two seconds from breaking it when Cas grabs his free arm and lowly intones, “Dean, don’t. Let’s just go.”

          “Where the hell you think you’re going, cocksucker?” the boy sneers, still standing in their way. “We’re not finished with you.”

          “Well, we’re finished with you,” Dean growls, clenching and unclenching his fists in an attempt to level his temper. “So get the fuck out of our way or I’ll start throwing punches.”

          The boy starts toward him and that’s all the incentive Dean needs; wrenching his arm from Cas’s grip, he reels back and punches him square in the face. Cas groans and covers his face while the girl shouts out. The bottle smashes to the floor.

          “Dean, let’s _go_ ,” Cas insists, tugging on his hand to pull him away. “Come on, someone’s going to hear something and come looking. Please, this is bad enough.”

          Dean insufflates hard another few breaths before nodding stiffly and following as he starts to walk away, around the boy doubled over grunting and clutching his face. Cas pulls on his coat just as they exit the warehouse. The storm escalated since their snowball fight, leaving them blind to any further distance than a few meters ahead, wind howling through the empty trees. Cas ducks his head against the cold; Dean tucks his own into his zipped up jacket and grabs Cas’s hand, to keep him close as they navigate the snow.

 

~*~

 

Three days later, the remnants of the storm have not even begun to fade, but the roads and sidewalks were plowed and shoveled. Cas is red-cheeked when he finally knocks on the Winchesters’ door.

          Sam pulls it open, young gaze looking up at Castiel with curiosity. Cas doesn’t even have to ask for him; Sam nods without a word and turns to find his brother. Dean comes downstairs and finds Cas shivering on the doorstep, but as soon as he sees Dean, he crosses the threshold and throws himself at him, arms around his neck while Dean’s encircle Cas’s waist. Cas shakes against him, tearless but clearly upset, until he gathers himself enough to speak.

          “Do they know?” is the first thing he whispers.

          Dean clutches him a little tighter and nods into his hair. “Yes,” he breathes.  “Dad hasn’t spoken to me in thirty-six hours. But he’ll come around.” He leans back enough to stroke through his hair and over his neck, rubbing his back soothingly and kissing the side of his face.

          “What happened, baby?” he murmurs, hugging him close again. He hasn’t seen him since the night at the warehouse.

          “My uncle kicked me out,” he says, voice barely audible. Dean notices a single backpack resting on the floor over his shoulder, next to the still-open door.

          “I’m sorry,” Dean says, holding him closer and swaying slightly on the spot. “I’m so, so sorry, Cas. This is all my fault.”

          “Dean,” says Cas, shaking his head as best he can with the limited room, “This is _not_ your fault. It’s not either of our faults. It’s everyone else who’s got the problem, not us.”

          Dean closes his eyes and holds him, unsure what to do. After several minutes in silence, Cas still shaking from a mix of the cold and upset, Mary comes into the room. She shuts the front door before approaching her son and his best friend, and when she does she simply wraps her arms around them both.

          They all require several minutes to separate, and when they do, Mary takes one of Castiel’s hands and one of Dean’s. She squeezes once and lets go, walkng around the back of the couch and sitting without a word. Castiel and Dean take seats on either side of her, and she puts an arm around either of them and kisses them both on the cheek.

          “My boys,” she says fondly, ruffling Dean’s hair. “My poor, sweet boys.”

          Sam pokes his head in from the kitchen, watching the three of them curiously, and shouts, “I’m your boy too!”

          “Yes, you are,” says Mary, grinning. “Come here,” she adds, gesturing to her youngest, and Sam immediately comes bounding into the room and sits on Dean’s other side. Mary stretches that arm further to run her hand through Sam’s hair, too.

          Dean rolls his eyes. His parents _definitely_ coddle his younger brother too much; he’s the most affectionate, non-rebellious, well-adjusted preteen he knows. And he _wants_ to hug his _mother_.

          “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester,” mutters Cas, cheeks red in the face of such honest affection. “That’s very kind of you. I’ve always considered you something of a mother figure myself.”

          “Well, you’re as good as a son to me,” she responds. Dean withholds his retching.

          After a moment, Cas pulls away, smiling shiftily at the three Winchesters settled on the couch. He nods at first Dean, then Sam, then Mary, and says, “Look, thank you for the comfort and care, but I should find a motel before it gets too dark and too cold.”

          Dean glances at his mother but doesn’t say anything, and as he starts to get to his feet and Cas reaches out for his hand, Mary intervenes, knocking her son’s arm away and enfolding Castiel in a warm hug. After a few silent moments, she bends to kiss the top of his messy hair.

          “Don’t be stupid,” she says fiercely, rubbing his back. “You’ll stay right here, Castiel.”

          Cas pulls away, his face twisted up. “Mrs. Winchester—”

          “This is not a debate,” she barks over the end of his sentence. Then she smiles more sweetly and, after another quick squeeze, turns back to the couch.

          “Dean, help Castiel bring his bag up to the guest room,” she commands, starting for the entrance to the other room. “I’ll make sandwiches. Now the storm’s gone quiet, we can drive over to the Novaks’ after lunch and pick up the rest of Cas’s things, alright?”

          “I don’t think he wants to see me,” Cas mutters, looking down and scuffing his shoe on the carpet. Dean inches forward and quietly takes his hand, their entwined fingers almost hidden by how close he shifted to Cas’s side.

          “I don’t think I care,” Mary replies loftily, looking over at them so imperiously that Castiel’s a little frightened on his uncle’s behalf. Then her tone tempers again and she calls, “Sam? Do you want to help me make lunch?”

          Sam nods eagerly and pushes himself up and off the couch, then runs after his mother where she disappears around the other side of the doorway. Dean squeezes Cas’s hand once before letting go and slinging the backpack over his shoulder, stretching his unencumbered arm out behind him so that Cas can reclaim the extremity and be led up the stairs.

          Dean shuts the door to the spare room behind Castiel and throws the pack on the bed, then reaches forward to cup Castiel’s face and kisses him, once.

          “I love you, Cas,” he murmurs, like now that he’s said it once he wants to make up for the all the years he didn’t. Cas bunches fistfuls of Dean’s shirt and burrows his face in Dean’s neck. “We’re gonna take care of you, baby.”

          After a few seconds Dean realizes that Castiel is shaking and that, as he pets through his hair soothingly, his shirt is growing steadily wetter in the shoulder area. He starts to sway on the spot, as close to rocking as he can from this position, and shushes him, and holds him.

 

This serenity lasts forty-seven days.

          They go back to their separate schools on the sixteenth day, alternating between rooms as they help each other pack and occasionally convincing Sam to assist. When they’re alone, they kiss in the hallway and they kiss pushed down in their clean laundry piles and they kiss after they fight about to whom this jacket belongs (Dean stole it from him in the ninth grade, but he’s feigning ignorance of this particular occasion because it still has a nice fit). Afterwards, when Cas has the coat buttoned up around him and Dean’s done punching him in the arm, they manage to finish the job without any more detours and thirty minutes later, with John’s help, they drag their suitcases down the stairs to stand in the front entryway. Sam runs out to hug them and Mary kisses them goodbye, and Dean and Cas clamor into the back of the car as John starts the engine. Dean grabs Cas by the collar and pulls him in for a long, hard kiss before he gets out at the airport, then climbs over into the passenger seat as they watch him walk inside. John doesn’t say anything afterwards, just turns on music that they listen to all the way to Dean’s college until pull up by his dorm building.

          For the following twenty-six days, they talk as much as they can. They email through one of the few computers in each of their university libraries and phone each other when they can find the time, but it’s slow and scattered and when they do talk, they do so for hours, because so many days passed between when they last communicated and now.

          Then five days go by with nothing. Dean emails him four times and leaves three messages, because it may seem obsessive but Cas _always_ calls him back within twenty-four hours and Dean’s starting to get worried that he hasn’t heard anything at all.

          Forty-seven days after Castiel’s uncle kicked him out, Dean’s friend Benny, who lives in one of the frats and is a few years older, invites him to a party on the other side of campus. He shrugs on one of his leather jackets and jams a few bucks in one of his pockets—he doesn’t think he’ll need it but he likes to get hangover breakfast in the morning, so just in case he doesn’t make it home tonight—before locking the door to his empty dorm room and hustling down the stairs; the sooner he gets outside the sooner he can get back _inside_ , to warmth and Benny’s liquor cabinet.

          Except when he opens the door to exit the building, he steps out onto the cement path and directly on someone’s foot. He jumps backward and slams into the closed door, and the stranger in front of him grabs him with a freezing hand and says lowly, “Hello, Dean.”

          “Cas?” says Dean, leaning closer in the dark. “What are you doing here?”

          “It’s a long story,” sighs Cas, shuffling closer. “Can I come inside? I’ve been out here for an hour waiting for someone to let me in.”

          “Are you serious?” Dean half-laughs. “Jesus fuck, it’s like ten degrees! Fuck me, come here.”

          He takes his icy hand and leads him back inside. They’re silent all the way up to the third floor, where Dean shuts them into his room again. Only when they finally sit down on the edge of his bed does Dean frame his face and kiss him hello, but he pulls away quickly and says, “Fuck, baby, you’re freezing.”

          “I’m aware.” Cas rolls his eyes—a habit he definitely picked up from his weeks in the Winchester household.

          Dean shakes his head, draws his comforter off most of the bed, and wraps it around Cas, keeping his arms around him after he does and pulling Cas into him. Cas squirms futilely, unable to extricate his hands to push him away, until finally he slumps over, says, “This is highly undignified,” and Dean releases him, laughing.

          While Cas sits there shivering, Dean flips on some music and guides him further onto the bed, so they’re sitting cross-legged facing each other, Cas still with his gigantic blanket draped around him. Dean slips his hands into Cas’s blanket and runs them over his thighs, up and down, over and over.

          “Talk to me, baby,” he murmurs persuasively. “Not that I’m not glad to see you,” he adds, leaning in to kiss him again now that he’s warming a little. “Really, really glad.” He kisses him again, a little deeper. “But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in New York?”

          Instead of answering right away, Cas leans forward and slides his arms around Dean’s torso, head on his chest, then crawls even closer. Dean unfolds his legs so that Cas can nestle against him, and he draws him toward him more as he shifts backward until he’s propped up against the wall, arms around Cas and idly playing with his hands. Cas hums and snuggles closer, closing his eyes.

          “I love you, Dean,” he breathes.

          Dean blinks, straightening in surprise.  When Cas turns toward him, opening his eyes to examine him, Dean relaxes again and bends to kiss him.

          “I love you too, Cas, you know I do,” he says, eyebrows drawing together. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

          Cas shakes his head and burrows further into him, shutting his eyes again and pulling his blanket closer to his body, which finally stopped shaking. Dean scoffs and forces him a few inches away, and Cas looks at him again, displeased.

          “Cas!” protests Dean, “Come on! It’s a Thursday night in March. What the hell’s going on?”

          Cas sighs. “I can’t go back next year. So there’s no point in finishing out the semester.”

          “Why can’t you go back? You got more than half your tuition in scholarships, angel. You’re fucking brilliant.”

          Cas mumbles something under his breath. Dean crushes him back against his chest and presses his lips to his ear.

          “Didn’t quite catch that. What was that?”

          “My uncle won’t pay the guardian loan, and I can’t afford his half. I’m screwed.”

          “You’re not screwed,” Dean snaps. “You think I’m gonna let your douchebag uncle fuck up your future cos he’s pissed about who you let touch your dick?”

          “Dean—”

          “ _No_. Fuck this. And my parents aren’t gonna let this happen either!”

          “ _Dean_ ,” he presses, turning around, raising to his knees, and cupping his face, thumbs rubbing small circles on his jaw. “Please stop, okay? I know you’re trying to help, but it’s alright. I don’t need a degree. I have the source materials and the syllabi for the rest of the semester, and a few decent contacts through the university. I can start writing on my own. I mean, it won’t be easy, and it’ll be slow, but I—I don’t know.  It’ll be something.”

          He refuses to reconsider, completely unwilling to accept any kind of help that Dean or his family might be able to provide. Dean argues, Cas defends himself, and in the end Dean concedes and they just end up making out on his bed. They’re eighteen and hopeless, and it feels more like the beginning of the rest of their lives than the beginning of the end.


	2. lives with only emergencies

Fridays are the worst.

          That’s not the most orthodox opinion, Dean knows, but he can’t help it when it’s the only day of the week that he doesn’t get to see Cas. He has work before Cas even gets up and later Castiel goes to the library to type up what he’s written over the past few days since he last went, so they can’t meet up for lunch; then Dean comes home after Cas leaves for writer’s group, which takes three to five hours. Charlie invites him over for their weekly dinner at her apartment, where Dean _loves_ to go because she makes killer pasta and he really likes her girlfriend (she’s been dating Dorothy since freshman year at college but he didn’t meet her until he transferred schools into the city with them summer after sophomore year, three months ago). By the time he gets home, Cas locked himself away _hours_ ago to put serious effort into his novel, and his dedication combined with his desperation to incorporate the suggestions he got earlier means that Dean can barely tear him away from his pen and notebook long enough to receive a kiss hello, let alone have the slightest semblance of a real conversation.

          When he gets home after Charlie’s one evening, he drapes his jacket over one of the kitchen chairs and throws the leftover penne alla vodka he took from her place into the refrigerator. Cas usually sections off their room until Dean gets home, at which point he retreats to the living room until bedtime, well after Dean falls asleep, usually. Dean knocks and enters even though Cas doesn’t answer, assuming that he’s too absorbed in his work to respond.

          He doesn’t turn around or even look up when Dean comes in, and not until Dean rakes a hand through his hair and presses a kiss to his cheek does Cas finally slide a glance to the side and mumble, “Hello, Dean,” without ever really turning away from his work.

          “You want food? I brought back leftovers from Charlie’s.”

          “M’good. Thanks, Dean.”

          He sighs and removes his hand from Cas’s hair. “’Kay. ‘Night, probably.”

          He’s almost out the door when Cas calls, “Wait, Dean!” When he turns, he adds, “Did you want the bedroom? I can take the couch until I’m done.”

          “M’fine, Cas,” he says. “I’ve got shit to do.”

          At this, Cas finally looks up and turns around, bracing his hands on the back of his chair. “Are you okay?”

          “What? Why?”

          “You’re acting weird. Are you sure you’re okay?”

          “I’m fine! I’ll see you later.”

          Friday are always tense. They only really have big fights on Fridays, and it’s the only day of the week they spend their downtime in separate rooms, and the only one where they go to sleep alone.

          Saturdays are better. Infinitely better.

          Eleven o’clock came around already by the time that Dean wakes up, blinking at the wall that he’s facing because of how he is pressed against the pillow. He tries to shift off his stomach, but there’s an arm around his waist so he can’t do anything but turn onto his side. He hides his face before he opens his eyes, head against something kind of hard but soft only in that it has a give, and after awhile Dean manages to slowly lift his head to encounter more and more sunlight until, squinting heavily, he catches the eye of the person whose chest he’s resting against. When he notices that he’s lucid, Castiel smiles at him, then leans down to kiss him chastely.

          “Good morning, baby,” mumbles Dean. He wraps his arms around Cas and snuggles closer to him, closing his eyes. “You smell good,” he adds, running his hands under Cas’s shirt.

          “I’ve already been up, gone for a run, and showered,” says Cas, poking Dean in the side, _hard_. Dean flinches, but with the grip Cas has around him, he has nowhere to go. “You’re abnormally lazy.”

          “I am _not_!” Dean protests, even as he slips a leg between Cas’s and nestles his face in Cas’s neck again. “Stop moving around, I’m going back to bed.”

          “Get your lazy ass up,” says Cas, flipping Dean onto his back and laying on top of him, elbows and arms bracketing Dean’s head. “We’ve got stuff to do.”

          “What kind of _stuff_?”

          “Well, for one, we said we’d meet Hester at three. And for another—”

          “We haven’t had sex in two days?” Dean suggests, sliding his hands up Cas’s sides.

          Cas kisses him again, letting his teeth just barely graze Dean’s lip. “We only missed yesterday,” Cas murmurs, nuzzling into his hair.

          “Thursday morning was forty-eight hours ago,” Dean smirks.

          Cas rolls his eyes. “That’s not _exactly_ where I was going with this anyway.”

          Dean raises his chin to capture Cas’s mouth again and wraps his legs around Cas’s waist. “Is that a no?”

          “Well—” Cas starts, interrupted by Dean’s lips again before he can finish. “—We really don’t have the time, Dean, I want to finish the chapter I’m working on before we go. And you have to finish your assignment, don’t you? Isn’t it due Monday?”

          Dean pulls back and flops down, groaning. “You’re a shitty lay, babe,” he sighs, arms splayed. He reaches up to card his hand through Cas’s hair. “I’ve been putting that off for three weeks, you think I wanna do it now?”

          “No, I think you _have_ to do it now,” says Cas, kissing his wrist before rolling off him, straightening his t-shirt when he’s on his feet, “Because Sunday’s my rest day and I intend to _rest_ all day with you. Maybe several times. In multiple different places.”

          Dean huffs and flips over onto his stomach again, and Cas spends the next half hour plucking at his clothes and tugging at his limbs until he finally gets him, inch by inch, off the bed and standing up. He’s grumpy and pouty and Cas takes his hand and leads him into the kitchen, where he then sits Dean down and proceeds to putter around cooking him breakfast and making his own lunch. When he sets their plates down, an omelet for Dean and the leftover penne for himself, Dean kisses him multiple times in gratitude, lazy, lingering kisses that only end when Cas pushes him away so that he can properly eat his food. They get through the meal without too much interruption—Dean keeps knocking their feet together and nuzzling into his arm and trying to hold his free hand—or conversation, and when they’re cleaning up Dean won’t stop pushing him up against the counter to shove his hands in his back pockets and lick into his mouth. Cas hums against him and tangles a hand in his hair, reciprocating briefly, but enthusiastically as ever.

          “You still have to shower and get changed,” Cas reminds him, while Dean feathers kisses across his face: his cheeks, his eyelids, the corners of his mouth, his forehead, the bridge of his nose.

          “I love you,” Dean says in lieu of a real response.

          “ _Dean._ ”

          “Come on, baby, stay and have some fun,” he murmurs, nuzzling his jaw and cheek.

          Cas rolls his eyes and allows Dean to kiss him once more before pushing him back, and he steps away with a grunt.

          “I like you better than homework,” he pouts, ignoring the fact that he very much is acting like a petulant eleven-year-old when he crosses his arms.

          “I like you better than work, too,” Cas concedes, “but that doesn’t excuse either of us from our obligations.”

          Dean levels a glare at him, but it has no malice, no fire. “I hate it when you’re responsible,” he sighs wistfully.

          They manage to finish their tasks before three, and after Dean takes a quick shower, they head out the door, Dean laughing at Cas’s ensemble.

          “This is the ugliest fucking color I’ve ever seen,” he notes, plucking at Cas’s burnt orange sweater as they amble down the front steps of their apartment complex. Dean leaps down the last few onto the pavement below, then waits for Cas to join him so that he can continue teasing him. “And you’re wearing a _beanie_ and _gloves_. What the fuck? It’s only October.”

          “I’m cold!” he says defensively. Then: “Shut up.”

          Dean laughs at him again but five minutes of walking later he’s blowing on his extremities to keep them warm and Cas takes his hand so that his glove can provide a little warmth, rubbing circles into his thenar with his thumb.

          “Thanks,” grumbles Dean, looking anywhere but his boyfriend.

          “I like these hands. I couldn’t let them freeze off,” says Cas, clasping the one he held with his other hand as well so as to kiss it quickly. “They’ve been good to me. They cook me dinner sometimes.”

          “ _Sometimes_?” he protests, shoving at his shoulder. “I’ve made dinner for like, the past four nights!”

          “You brought home _leftover pasta_ ,” Cas scoffs, rolling his eyes. “That hardly counts as ‘making dinner’.”

          “Don’t make air quotes at me. Of course it counts! It fed you, didn’t it?”

          “ _I_ fed me,” he says, tapping Dean’s knuckles with his fingers. “Kraft mac n cheese from a box, two hours before _you_ even got home.”

          “You ate the penne!”

          “For lunch!” he says, smiling just a little. “Which means that you technically provided me with day-old _lunch_. Not dinner. Breadwinner, indeed.”

          Dean makes an indignant noise and retracts his hand, subsiding into grumbles. Cas stifles his laughter for a few seconds until he has his mirth under control, at which point he steps in front of Dean, blocking his path and forcing him to stop. Dean glowers down at him, managing (in what he considers an impressive show of obstinacy) to maintain his glare as Cas slides his palms over his neck, cradling his face and leaning up the intervening few inches to kiss him. Dean pouts through the whole thing, and afterwards Cas snakes his arms around him, ignoring his unresponsiveness.

          “You’re a wonderful provider, Dean,” he says sincerely, and Dean reluctantly turns his gaze on him—at least until he adds, “You’re _wonderful_ and _beautiful_ and I would _die_ without my big strong boyfriend to protect and feed and indulge me like the nineteenth century housewife I truly am.”

          Dean shoves him away, and Cas has to recollect himself from laughing before he starts walking again. He drags Dean the next few steps until he starts keeping pace with him, and even still, he lags a few steps behind.

          “Stop sulking,” Cas chides after passing a few more stores and glancing over his shoulder to find Dean staring morosely at the ground.

          Dean manages to hold his moody expression for a full two seconds before he doubles over laughing, forcing Cas to a stop. He claws his way upright, still shaking, and drags Cas into an embrace, where he huffs out near his ear, “Fuck, dude, I wasn’t sulking. I was one hundred percent ogling your ass.”

          Cas rolls eyes and pushes him arms-length away so that he can more easily slide an arm around his waist and force him forward again.

          They arrive at the restaurant and give their name, and somebody seats them just as Cas’s phone rings.

          “Castiel!” Hester cries when he picks up, and she’s loud enough that Dean can hear her from his own seat. Cas presses the phone closer to his ear to try to understand her better, because loud music swirls in the backround and indistinct voices shout to each other nearby. “I’m not gonna make it, so sorry— _fuck me, sorry, excuse me—_ ” she adds to someone in the background, “—I’m uh, all tied up at work. We’ll get together later, yeah? I’m really sorry! I have to go, we’ll reschedule— _get the fuck away from me, you fucking creep—_ ”

          The call cuts off before Cas can even say her name. As Cas sets the phone down, Dean raises his eyebrows at him from across the table.

          “What’s up with Hester?” he asks, tearing into some of the bread left in a basket on their table.

          “She says she’s at work,” says Cas, carefully cutting into his own piece with a knife and spreading butter across the insides.

          “Where’s she really?” Dean laughs, knowing Hester too well to assume she’d work on a Saturday.

          “I don’t know, probably getting into a barfight already,” he sighs. “She’s still upset that I don’t hang out with the gang anymore. Has to party extra hard to make up for the missing body.”

          They pause in the conversation when the waitress returns to take their drink and appetizer order, but after Dean opts for a soda they skip straight to the sandwiches.

          “It’s almost Thanksgiving break,” Cas mentions suddenly when their waitress walks away.

          Dean intertwines their hands on the tabletop and hums noncommittally around another piece of bread. He swallows with some difficulty and asks, “Yeah, so? You want to go out and shoot us from fresh turkey or something?”  
          Cas kicks him under the table, landing a solid hit on his shin that causes him to recoil with a shout, his free hand reaching down to rub at his mistreated limb. “No!” he says, rolling his eyes at Dean’s discomfort. “Thanksgiving means family. Family means going to see family.”

          “That was a beautiful description, Cas,” he drawls, slumping back in his seat and kicking one of his feet up onto an empty spot on Cas’s chair. “So, family is thousands of dollars on a round trip plane ticket? That’d be peachy, ‘cept your family doesn’t even want you.”

          He pauses; they fall into silence. Castiel’s expression hardens minutely, and he pulls his hands back into his lap.

          “I didn’t mean that,” Dean mumbles. “I didn’t mean that. But you know what I mean. It’s cash we don’t have just to go down and freeze our asses off left out on the—”

          “ _Your_ parents don’t care about any of it,” Cas snaps, folding his arms. “Sam certainly doesn’t give a damn. Just because we aren’t blood, doesn’t mean we aren’t family. _They_ said _I_ was still family.”

          Dean sits up straight and reaches across the table, but he falls short and his palms rest downward on the table, fingers curling around the edge. “Cas, that’s not what I—”

          “We’re going,” he growls, looking away with his mouth set. “So pack your fucking bags.”

          Cas pretty much never curses in regular conversation. Dean leans back contritely and fits his own fingers together, twiddling his thumbs. Lunch passes in silence.

 

November is frosty. It snows at least once a week and they take turns lighting the fireplace. They don’t mention the fight directly, but every time Thanksgiving is mentioned—by him, by Charlie, by that sweet cashier at the deli— Cas closes up a little.

          The first time is over lunch ten days into the month. Dean is sitting on the counter facing Cas in a chair and picking apart his grilled cheese, licking off the cheese from where it clings to his fingers. Cas manages to eat more cleanly, but when a string of mozzarella peels off and wraps around his index finger, Dean grabs his wrist and sucks the digit into his mouth sans permission. Cas smiles until he’s done, then wipes the spit off his hand onto Dean’s t-shirt.

          “You just wanted more cheese,” Cas accuses, narrowing his eyes playfully.

          Dean laughs, head thrown back, and shoves the rest of his sandwich into his mouth so that he has both hands available to reach across the counter and grab the brick of mozzarella they used to cook.

          “I was gonna bring this shirt to Kansas, too,” Dean complains, cutting a slice off the square and tearing a piece off with his teeth. “Now there’s spit and cheese all over it.”

          He looks up when Cas doesn’t answer; he’s sitting with his head down, watching his fingers pick apart the food that he is no longer consuming.

          “Cas?” he asks tentatively, reaching down to jab him in the shoulder. He sways in his seat, then settles.

          Cas takes several deep breaths before raising his eyes to Dean’s, nails buried in his grilled cheese, body all shrunk down within himself.

          Dean hops off the counter. He wraps his arms around Cas’s waist and kisses the side of his face, laying his chin on the dip in his shoulder, and asks, “Baby?”

          Castiel is quiet for thirty more seconds before coming back to himself. He immediately spins the chair, slipping out of Dean’s grip and away from the counter. “Find different clothes,” he says coldly, marching into the bedroom and slamming the door.

          The second time is fifteen days later. Dean tries not to bring up Kansas at all, not particularly wanting a repeat of that first time; Cas refused to leave his room for three hours, and emerged calm and unfazed as ever, apparently removed from his earlier displeasure.

          They’re in the grocery store trying to choose a box of cereal, fighting over who gets last pick while Cas tries to keep Dean out of the cart.

          “I can’t _push_ you,” he grouses, shoving Dean’s leg off the cart again and onto the floor.

          “Are you calling me fat?” Dean says, now trying to wrest the handles from Castiel, who’s determinedly holding his post so that Dean can’t go rocketing down the aisles with his feet on the bottom part of the cart so that he can properly ride.

          “ _Yes_ ,” he says, elbowing Dean out of his way and reaching for the Lucky Charms.

          “Cas, _no_ ,” he says, grabbing his arm to stop its trajectory. “Cocoa Puffs are where it’s at!”

           “Dean, that’s disgusting. You can’t enjoy the sweetness of the Cocoa Puffs if there are no regular pieces in between them.”

          “Everyone eats around the regular pieces anyway!”

          “That’s _sacrilege_ ,” Cas says crossly. “What do you do, throw them out when they get soggy?”

          “No, you eat them _first_ so you can have spoonfuls of straight marshmallows after.”

          “Sweet merciful Lord, you are killing me,” says Cas, shaking his head.

          Dean takes a deep breath. Knowing what’s coming next, he jerks the arm he’s still holding so that Cas stumbles forward, and he holds his head with both hands and gently presses their lips together.

          “Speaking of sweet,” Dean says hesitantly, still holding Cas’s face and rubbing his thumbs in circles against his jaw, “and since we’re in the store already…What type of thing are we supposed to bring to someone’s house for a holiday party when we live in a different state across the country, when said people are family? Wine? Dessert?”

          Cas freezes and pulls away, just as Dean feared he might. Every time he mentions their vacation to see family, Cas can’t help but remember that it’s not exactly _his_ family they’re going to see. Not really. Not by blood.

          “Wine,” he says shortly, returning to man the cart. “John can never get enough wine. Can you grab the Cocoa Puffs so we can go?”

          Dean takes the Lucky Charms, but Cas’s expression doesn’t soften for hours.

          The third time is the night before they leave.

          Dean hauls the suitcases out of the attic without saying anything to Castiel. He leaves them piled in the bedroom next to the door, open and empty, but Cas walks around them without even glancing at them each time he passes. Finally, around five o’clock in the evening, Dean decides that he has to say something.

          “Cas?” he asks tentatively, by now properly afraid of the reaction when their trip is brought up.

          “Hmm?” Cas looks up from the book he’s reading on the couch, hot chocolate in one hand. Dean leans against the counter, fiddling with the fork he’s using. He’s reserved enough to actually stop eating pie, at least for a second.

          “I was thinking…We should pack. Our flight’s at six tomorrow, and we’ve got to leave at five just to make it to the airport. So we won’t have time in the morning.”

          “Okay,” he says, eyes straying back to his book. “Just let me finish this page…”

          Packing is a quiet affair; Dean puts on music to offset the unsettling atmosphere, and although Castiel hums along, he never outright sings like Dean does. They orbit each other as they move around the room to get to drawers and the closet and the suitcases, but rarely speak save to make small inquiries. As for touch, Cas appears to avoid him minutely, although he never makes his intentions overt.

          Cas sits on the suitcases so that Dean can zip them, and after they’re closed, his mood lightens considerably. He allows Dean to grab his hands so that he can jump from the bed to the floor, and leans up the few inches to press a soft kiss to his lips before stepping away.

          “Chinese for dinner?” he asks.

          Dean makes a thoughtful face, fussing with their packs, zipping them tighter and setting them down by the door. Cas watches him blankly until he turns back around wearing a wide smile, and Dean bends down to grab the backs of his knees and flip him backwards onto the now-empty bed.

          “I was thinking about something a little closer to home, you know?” he teases, capturing his mouth again.

          Cas smiles against his lips and gently forces him back—not a rejection, but a pause. Eyebrows knitting together, Dean sits up, knees bracketing his hips.

          “Can we order before we get into this?” pleads Cas.

          Dean grinds down a little, feels the beginning of an erection pressing back against his ass. He smirks.

          “You sure you’re prepared to wait?”

          Cas rolls his eyes. “I think I can last five minutes, Dean, as I am no longer a pubescent child. Can you hand me the phone?”

          Sighing, he nevertheless reaches over to the bedside table and grabs the landline out of its cradle, and Cas snatches it out of his hand. He spends enough time eating takeout during the week, ensuring that he doesn’t have to stop writing even for a second, that he’s memorized the number for every restaurant that delivers in a twenty-mile radius.

          While the phone’s still ringing, Dean climbs off of him, goes to foot of the bed, and starts drawing off Cas’s faded grey sweatpants. Cas raises an eyebrow from where he’s still lying flat on the bed, confused but mostly wary, knowing Dean far too well.

          He manages to hiss, “Dean, _stop it—_ ” before someone evidently comes onto the other line and he’s forced to greet them, and Dean smirks and crawls back onto the bed between his legs.

          “Shh,” he murmurs, kissing the insides of his thighs. “They can’t know that my sweet, precious little angel boy gets off to being _incredibly_ naughty.”

          Cas presses his lips together hard and stares at the ceiling, trying to concentrate on what the girl on the other end of the line is saying, but his thighs are shaking around Dean’s head. And he hasn’t even really done anything yet.

          When he breathes hotly against his cock underneath the cloth of his boxers, he can feel Cas tensing above him, but instead of giving him the relief he craves, Dean coaxes him onto his stomach. Only then does he finally slide his boxers down, leaving them somewhere between his knees and his ankles. Dean takes his time, sucking at the backs of his thighs and the skin of his back, and Cas squirms against the bed and stutters out, “H-hello? Yes, we’d like to place a delivery order—”

          Dean huffs a laugh that Cas can feel against his ass, but then he has to fight back a groan when Dean spreads his cheeks and licks over his hole. Dean’s shushing him is marred by his slight chuckle before he presses his mouth back up to Cas’s hole. Cas lets out a muffled noise and rubs his hips down onto the mattress, attempting to generate some friction on his cock.

          “Are those free with the to-go orders?” he asks, jerking the mouthpiece away as he bites back a gasp when Dean’s tongue finally breaches his entrance.          “Mmhmm,” he manages after, voice unnaturally high. “That’s—yep, that should be magnificent.” He coughs and looks over his shoulder. “No, wait, that’s not all—Dean?”

          “What’s up, baby?” He pulls back far enough to shuck his shirt over his head and toss it on the ground before lying down again and diving back in.

          “What do you— _ah_ —want from Chow Fen?”

          “Mm, nothing,” he says, looking up with a goofy grin. “I’m already eating.”

          “You’re hilarious,” says Cas, turning back around and propping himself up on his elbows. “No, no. I’m sorry, I’m still here,” he adds into the telephone, remarkably calm for someone all but humping the mattress as he attempts to fuck himself back onto Dean’s tongue, clearly craving more.

          Dean sits up and reaches for the lube in their bedside table, drizzling it over his hand.

          “Do you offer the same sides with— _fuck!_ ”

          Dean’s laughter almost eclipses the inquiries of the woman taking the order, but Cas does a remarkable job of calmly reassuring her whilst also grinding back on the finger that Dean has in his ass to compensate for the loss of his tongue.

          He’s up to three by the time that Cas finally finishes ordering and hangs up, whereupon he all but chucks the phone across the room.

          “Damn it, Dean, come here,” he gasps.

          Dean crawls up the bed while Cas turns over beneath him, and when their faces are level he grabs his shoulders and pulls him down for a heavy kiss.

          “So we’re switching up from the norm?” asks Dean, aligning their hips and grinding down while Cas bites harshly at his bottom lip.

          “ _Yes_ , Dean,” he groans, neck arched, “so shut up and _fuck me_ already, delivery only takes twenty minutes in light traffic.”

          Dean laughs and guides him onto his stomach again, a pillow underneath him. “We are so an old married couple,” he mentions, dropping a kiss to the back of his neck. Cas doesn’t respond, just cants his hips back to fit his ass against Dean’s cock through his jeans.

          “I don’t care,” he whines. “Please unclothe.”

          The sound of unzipping follows his gentle laughter, and then he returns, his lubed-up cock teasing his rim for a few seconds before pushing past his entrance and pressing in slowly, stopping and starting several times before finally bottoming out. When properly full, Cas insufflates harshly, and Dean immediately drapes himself over his back and presses his lips to the back of his neck, his shoulder blades, his hair, adulating all the while.

          “Are you okay, baby?” he murmurs, nosing behind one of his ears. It’s been a few months since Cas bottomed. “You’re alright?”

          “M’fine,” Cas pants out, starting to push back into him as much as possible, ass nestling further into him. “Can you… _do_ something?”

          “You sure?”

          “I’m sure.” Somehow, even his breathless moans sound petulant and bossy.

          Dean grunts assent and sits back so that he’s at a better vantage point to begin thrusting, shallowly at first, then deeper and faster. Cas crushes his face against his pillow so that he can shove back into Dean’s lap, moaning and clutching at the edge of the mattress.

          As his hips continue to slam forwards into Cas, Dean curls himself further over the body shaking beneath him, hand snaking up his arm until it can pry free one of Cas’s hands and slip their fingers together. Cas chokes out, _“Dean—_ ” but instead of shushing him, as he did before, Dean presses a kiss to the knob at the top of his spine. A drop of sweat clings to his lips when he pulls back, escaping onto his tongue as he whispers, “I know, baby, I know.”

          A guttural noise gets mangled and lost on the way out of Cas’s throat. He slings an arm behind him, clutching at Dean’s hip to pull him in closer.

          “I know,” Dean murmurs again, as Cas grinds back against him instead of allowing Dean to move away. “You’re so beautiful, Cas, so gorgeous. So perfect for taking me like this, you’re so good.” His free hand grabs at his waist to pull him up, and Cas gasps as the position change finally hits him right. Dean releases his waist to tug on his hair when he arches his head back, like he knows he likes. “I love you so much,” he breathes against his ear, feathering kisses to the skin underneath.

          “I love you too,” Cas gasps, the sentence stuttered and broken, like all of his atoms were splintering apart and underneath was just pleasure and love and _Dean_. He groans and shoves himself back further onto Dean’s cock, harder, as Dean bites down on his neck and complies with him, slamming into him with even more intensity and falling into the new rhythm.

          “ _Please_ , Dean,” he pants out, clenching his hand around Dean’s.

          “I’ve got you, baby,” he murmurs, still slathering the side of his throat with licks and kisses and bites whilst the hand gripping his waist moves to Cas’s own cock, hard and leaking against his stomach, and begins to steadily jack him off to the same cadence as their joined hips.

          As Cas begins garbling that he’s close, the doorbell rings. Dean groans and slumps over, face buried in Cas’s hair.

          “How important is that?”

          Cas huffs and turns his head, just enough to catch a glimpse of him. “We’re gonna want it later,” he sighs. Even as he talks, he hasn’t stopped slowly circling his hips.

          Dean makes a tiny whining noise in the back of his throat, then pins Cas down by his shoulders and carefully pulls out, ignoring the keening sound he makes at the sudden emptiness and the way his hips automatically buck up. With a finger, he turns Cas’s head, presses a soft kiss to his lips, and promises, “I’ll be back in two seconds, okay? Don’t finish without me.” He winks and yanks the sheet out from underneath him, wrapping it around his waist and tying a knot while he goes to the door.

          He doesn’t notice he’s sweating until the delivery girl is staring at his miles of bare skin, holding their bag of boxes in both hands and openly gawking. Her eyes carefully avoid where his dick is tenting the sheet.

          “Uhm—I—well, here’s your food. Uhm. Yeah,” she says, skirting her gaze and holding out their bag.

          Cas decides to input his voice into this horrific conversation at that precise moment, plaintively calling out, _“Dean!”_ from the other room. The girl flushes a deep shade of red, almost as deep as Dean turns while he fumbles through the dollar bills in his hand until he finds the correct amount, including an extraneous seven dollars by mistake.

          “Keep the change,” he mutters, stuffing the money into the girl’s hand and grabbing the bag with his free one. He practically slams the door in her stunned face, then makes sure to lock it before basically running back to the bedroom, kicking the sheets from his hips as he enters the room.

          Cas has explicitly ignored his instructions not to move, as he has three fingers shoved in his own ass and he’s trying to both fuck himself back onto them and rut against the sheets at the same time. Dean throws their takeout onto the bedside table and clamors back onto the bed, grabbing Cas’s wrists and pinning them above his head, lips close to his ear.

          “I thought I told you not to finish without me, baby,” he whispers, nipping admonishingly at his ear.

          “I didn’t _finish_ ,” Cas points out.

          Dean grants him a dark laugh before releasing his wrists, sliding their hands back together before sliding back home. Cas wordlessly pushes back against him, trying to regain some kind of rhythm. Dean matches his pace seamlessly, leaning forwards to suck bruises along the span of his back and shoulders.

          After a few minutes of this, Cas’s desperate writhing underneath him grows uneven. He chokes out, “I’m close—” before Dean silences him, coaxing him to turn his head so that he can cover his mouth with his own. The angle is awkward, but sufficient; Cas’s moans are very slightly muffled against his lips and tongue, and when he comes, he jerks his body back against Dean’s, once, then slumps forward onto the bed.

          Even blissed out and sated, he has the presence of mind to continue canting his hips up to meet Dean’s thrusts downward. Dean drives into him twice more before grabbing his slack waist on either side and pulling him up just as he slams down, throwing his head back as he comes with a strangled shout.

          When Dean collapses onto him, Cas carefully pushes him back, forcing him to pull out, before turning over and wrapping his arms around his waist, allowing him to lay on top of him with their bodies aligned. Dean snuffles and burrows his head further into Cas’s neck, and Cas rakes his hand idly through Dean’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.

          After a time, he kisses Dean on the cheek and asks, “Can you move yet?”

          “Mmf, I’m working on it,” he grunts.

          “Good, because I’m hungry,” he says, rolling Dean to the side, sitting up, and reaching for the Chinese. He tears open the bag, then pokes Dean in the ribs. “Sit up, don’t you want food?”

          “M’starving,” he admits, pushing himself to a seated position against the headboard. He slings the duvet over their legs. “Okay, I’m alive; pass me the dumplings.”

          He ignores the chopsticks that he never figured out how to use anyway, diving in with his hands. One of Cas’s hands rests over his thigh, and when he glances to the side, mouth stuffed full with Chinese food and hands dirty with the same, he notices Cas smiling absentmindedly at him, like he’s glistening with early winter snowfall and the street after rain instead of the grease off their takeout food.

          “What?” he asks, reaching for a napkin.

          “Nothing,” says Cas, returning to his dinner.

          Dean leans over to press a kiss to his forehead; Castiel makes a face and scrubs at the skin, muttering about breakouts.

 

The next morning makes Dean want to petition to obliterate the sun completely. He jams the pillow over his face and rolls over, but Cas grabs it from his clenched hands and throws it on the floor.

          “Get up,” he says, arms crossed. “We have just enough time to eat and do a last minute check that we have everything.”

          “It’s not even light out,” Dean groans, pulling the blanket up over his head.

          “One hour,” Cas warns, already in the doorway. “Breakfast in ten.”

          He manages waking up in baby steps, first rolling onto the floor, then propping his back against the bed, then crawling onto his knees, before finally hauling himself to his feet. He hobbles toward the door and is just reaching for the handle when it shoots open, clattering against the wall, and reveals Cas, who shouts, _“Dean!”_

          Cas grabs his arm when he lurches backward, his free hand clapping over his mouth to stifle his laughter.

          “I’m so sorry,” he manages between his fingers.

          “Shut up,” says Dean, shouldering past him into the outer room. “What’d you cook?”

          “Nothing, if your insolence continues to take precedence over your manners,” says Cas, leading him out into the dark.

          “Alright, Mom,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry that you haven’t figured out how grumpy I am in the morning. Can we eat now?”

          Cas shakes his head and sets the plate down on the counter between them while Dean grabs a pair of forks and the maple syrup; without bothering with separate plates, they dump enough syrup on the plate to drown the pancakes and start digging straight in with their utensils, focusing too much on chewing to converse much. Dean sloths through his last few bites while Cas goes to start the final sweep of the apartment, then takes an inordinate amount of time changing clothes and helping him sort through the bedroom and bathroom for last-minute additions to their packs. Dean insists on driving to the airport but never goes above forty if he can help it, refusing to move into the fast lane or carpool lane, no matter how often Castiel glances at the clock and taps his foot against the floor on the passenger side or offers to drive for awhile. When they finally pull up to the airport, Dean struggles with lifting his bag from the trunk and with carrying it into the building.

          “Are you feeling okay?” Cas finally asks as he holds the door and waits for Dean to hobble inside.

          “I’m fine,” he says, shrugging and widening his eyes in the way he often does when lying through his teeth.

          “Are you sure?”

          “Yes,” he says, voice jumping up another octave. Cas narrows his eyes; they pause. Dean coughs and looks away, then shakily adds, “Are you, uh. I mean, don’t you think it might be more fun if—if we, you know, maybe took a road trip or something? You know, pile into the front seat and t-take a nice long drive down to Kansas instead? We could see everything along the way, wind through the country north to south—”

          Cas gently takes his hand and starts to lead him forward, toward the security line. “You’re afraid of flying,” he states plainly, looking up at him the few inches’ difference.

          Dean shifts uncomfortably between his feet, trying to stop again, but Cas doesn’t let him. “It’s never really been an issue until now!” he says, eyes flicking everywhere but Castiel. “Why do you think I drive everywhere, Cas? For fuck’s sake, I drove up here when I moved in the first place! I just—I mean, planes crash!”

          “Nothing’s going to crash,” Cas insists, rubbing circles into his hand with his thumb. “I am going to sit with you the entire time, and we’ll land in a few hours, and we’ll have a charming Thanksgiving dinner with our family, and—what?”

          Dean bites his lip to repress his smirk.

          _“What?”_ Cas asks again, brow knitting together.

          As they situate themselves at the back of the security line and start to remove their belts and other metal objects, Dean smiles fully. “ _Our_ family?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.

          “Shut up,” he mutters, looking down so as to hide his reluctant smile in the collar of his shirt. “I’ll retract my statement and disown you all.”

          “You love us,” Dean says, elbowing him in the ribs. “Now strip off your shoes, angel boy. The TSA is glaring.”

          Eventually they make it past security, and, as they are truly running late due to Dean’s meandering the entire journey here, they hustle to their terminal, Dean still lagging a little behind by pure instinct.

          Beside the entry, the attendant behind the podium is waving her hands and announcing last call, so they hurry on board without breaking stride at all. Cas pushes him into the middle seat and takes the window, so that he’s sandwiched on both sides by each his boyfriend and a middle-aged woman who immediately takes out a travel pillow and goes to sleep. Cas pulls down the shades so that Dean can’t see out the window, then resolutely takes his hand and prepares to begin his three-hour distraction technique.

          As soon as the airplane starts to roll across the runway, Dean clamps down on his hand and jams his eyes shut. Cas gently rubs his arm, up and down, up and down, and starts to talk.

          “Are you and Sam going to help Mary cook the turkey like usual?” he asks, squeezing his hand hard.

          Dean takes an extremely deep breath and, without opening his eyes, nods quickly. “Sam’s—uh.” He coughs. “Sam got this girlfriend recently. She’s gonna be there. To help us. Help us help Mom.”

          “Tell me about her,” Cas suggests quietly.

          “I’ve never seen her,” he says, starting to relax as he gets into it. “Her name’s Jessica Moore. Blonde, wavy hair, uhhh…blue eyes, I think. She goes to boarding school nearby, so she’s staying with us for the week. I’ve heard her described as the prettiest girl this side of the Mississippi.” He pauses, listens to his sentence over again in his head—to the automatic southern accent he tacks on, and sighs. “We need to get Sam out of the Bible Belt, my friend. He’s turning into a regular porch-swing-and-self-brewed-beer hick.”

          Hand pausing to rest on his upper arm, Cas leans over to press a kiss to his stubbled cheek. “Is…Jessica a big part of the…biblical community?” he ventures.

          “What?”

          “You know, does she believe in God…like my uncle does?”

          “Oh.” He blinks his eyes open and turns to look at him. “Oh. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. I mean, Sam wouldn’t—He wouldn’t be that stupid, right? His taste in women is a bit classier than _Zachariah_ , right? And he wouldn’t bring someone— _like that_ —into our house. I mean, he wouldn’t—”

          “Dean, relax!” This is getting him more worked up than the actual flight, which is starting to level out. The light flicks on, indicating that they can officially move about the cabin at will. “It’s okay, alright? We’ll just play it safe.”

          “What do you mean, ‘play it safe’?” he repeats, incredulous with just a little bit of anger touching at the edges.

          “You know,” he says, touching his fingers to the side of his face, “Let’s just keep it quiet. Just in case.”

          “Is that why you’re molesting my face and arm right now?” he asks, almost smiling. _Almost._

          Cas immediately retracts his limbs and settles them on his lap. “I’m just _saying_ ,” he continues, as though Dean never mouthed off, “we can just pretend that I’m a friend who had nowhere to go for the holidays. You’re doing me a favor. We’ve been best friends since we were children, but nothing else. You can last a week without shoving your hands down my pants, right?”

          “We’ll see,” he says, winking. Then he groans as the plane hits a patch of turbulence, and he leans his head back against the seat. Cas smooths a hand through his hair sympathetically.

          Cas dozes in and out of consciousness beside him, but Dean stays awake for the entirety of the three hours, fixated on the ceiling or the headrest of the seat in front of him, contemplating the probabilities of death. When they finally land, Dean shakes him awake and reaches to get their carry-on bags while Cas slowly awakens in his seat, stretching his arms out towards Dean and repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fists. Dean rolls his eyes, sets their bags on the floor, and pulls him up with one hand so that he falls against him. Cas wraps his arms around him and buries his face into his neck.

          “One more kiss for the road?” he asks earnestly, peering up at him.

          Dean smiles and bends down to gently press their lips together. When he pulls away to grab their bags and head for the exit, Cas looks after him suspiciously, following him down the aisle.

          “Did you drink while I was asleep?” he asks as they get off and into the airport terminal.

          “’Til they cut me off,” he replies unashamedly.

          “Mm, you taste like whiskey,” says Cas, licking his lips. “It’s not altogether unpleasant.”

          “Okay, time to shut up about my taste,” he says, straightening his back and sliding another step away from Castiel. “Apparently the gang came to meet us.”

          A few seconds later, someone shouts out; a tall, gangly, floppy-haired figure comes barreling toward them, and then he throws his arms around Dean.

          “Hey, Sammy!” Dean says happily, hugging him back and then ruffling his hair when he turns to embrace Cas, too. “Where’s the rest of the clan?”

          Sam steps back, bouncing on the balls of his feet with one hand still in each of their jackets. He’s not yet taller than Dean, but he almost is, the top of his head about level with Cas’s forehead despite the difference in years. Mary comes through the crowd first, hugging them simultaneously, then allowing her husband to hug his son, too, and shake Cas’s hand afterwards.

          “Jess is back at the house,” Sam explains as they begin to wend their way toward the baggage claim area. “She needed a few extra hours of sleep, but you guys can meet her when we get back. Jess is so awesome, you’ll both love her; last summer I took her to this thing in Austin, it was a three hour train ride but I wanted to take her to this dinner show—”

          Sam blathers incessantly about his girlfriend all the way to collect their other suitcases and to find their car, out in the sea of minivans and Toyotas. When they all pile in, Mary turns around in the passenger seat to glance at her boys lined in the back and gently quiets her youngest son.

          “Tell us about the city, boys,” she says, turning her gaze to Dean and Cas, squeezed into the middle and window seat respectively. “You never write anymore.”

          “I wrote you three weeks ago,” says Dean, rolling his eyes. “Besides, New York’s boring. The same routine every day; school, work, sleep. Repeat until death.”

          “Don’t be melodramatic,” says Cas, elbowing him. “We have _some_ fun.”

          “I don’t need to hear about that,” John interrupts from the front seat, without taking his eyes off of the road.

          “That’s not what I meant,” Cas says quickly, his face heating up to an impressive shade of red, while Sam and Dean absolutely scream with laughter beside him. “For instance, we went to a concert last week.” And had quick but intense sex in the bathroom after grinding for an hour and a half, but he does not find that part a necessary addition to the story. Dean quiets down afterward, obviously remembering the same events. He hurries to change the subject before he begins studying that night a little too in-depth for a family road trip.

          When they pull onto the Winchesters’ street, Dean nudges Sam up from where he’s been sleeping on his shoulder for the past twenty minutes.

          “Sammy, I gotta ask you something,” he says as they pull into the driveway. He grabs his arm to stop him from unbuckling while everyone else starts to exit the car and grab the bags in the back. Sam drowsily focuses on him, with difficulty.

          “Does…Jessica know what’s up? With me and Cas?”

          “No,” he says, frowning and rubbing his eyes. “That’s seemed like your business. I can tell her, if you want.”

          “No!” he says hurriedly. “Don’t. I mean, we don’t…we just want to be careful.”

          “Okay,” says Sam, shrugging. “It’s all the same to me.”

          Dean smiles gratefully, claps him on the shoulder, and clamors out of the car, joining the rest of his family in the back.

          Before they finish divvying up bags, the door to the house swings open, and a radiant girl appears on the front steps. She is smaller than Sam by about half a foot, blonde hair straightened flat with a ribbon tied around her head, the ends falling to the side in front of her ears. The flowing skirt of her red dress bounces around her knees as she bounds down the stairs, her smile wide and genuine.

          “Hi!” she calls, running to meet them and stopping short just beside the car. “Sam hasn’t shut up about you guys!” Her laugh is like bells as she hugs her boyfriend hello before turning to the others, first acknowledging Mary and John and then grinning up at the two remaining.

          “You must be Castiel,” she says, stretching out a hand. “There’s about a million pictures in the house, and you’re only in, like, three of them, so I figured you couldn’t be the flesh-and-blood brother.”

          “Very good guess,” he says, taking her proffered hand. “It’s good to meet you, Jessica. Sam hasn’t shut up about you either.”

          “Please, it’s Jess,” she says, retracting her arm and turning to Dean instead. “And Dean!”

          “Jessica Moore, as I live and breathe!” says Dean, bending down to embrace her. “Man, my little brother didn’t do you justice. And uh, what did you call her again, Sammy?” he adds, pulling back to grin at his brother. “A modern-day Artemis? But still—”

          “Shut up,” Sam grumbles, blushing and shoving Dean aside.

          “Well, I _am_ the better of the pair,” she says.

          The six of them manage to get all the bags upstairs and piled into the corner of the Dean’s old room, which, aside from being slightly barer, remains essentially the same as in his high school days. When everything is set down, Jessica does a slow turn, eyeing first the cluster of suitcases, then all of their empty hands. They all peer at her curiously as she seems to calculate something in her head.

          “Are the pair of you sharing a room?” she asks, looking at Dean’s queen-sized bed. It could technically accommodate two people, but they would have very few inches of space between them.

          “Oh!” says Cas, glancing at Dean. “Uh, no, but…we thought we’d sort through them in here, and then…”

          “Castiel will be staying with you in the guest room,” Mary supplies, laying her hands on her eldest son’s shoulders. “We should leave them to get settled. Sam, Jess, if you could help them unpack?”

          Smiling sweetly, she leads John out of the room, leaving the kids alone. Everyone else gets on their knees and starts opening suitcases, picking out articles of clothing and trying to figure out what belongs to whom. Dean purposefully picks out the case he knows has condoms and lube—they promised to stay hands off while in Kansas but he’s an optimist—and Cas takes the underwear suitcase to spare everyone else the trauma. Halfway through sorting out their shirts, Jess picks up a red long-sleeved hoodie and holds it out for examination.

          “Why did you guys mix everything together?” she asks.

          Dean doesn’t want to say that it’s because half of their closet is hopelessly mixed together, too. He loves when Cas wears his clothes.

          He shrugs. “Boys are lazy,” he says.

          After they finish sorting everything into two separate piles, they all transport Cas’s belongings into the guest room and dump them on the bed that Jessica hasn’t already claimed.

          “How come Castiel and I can share a room, but Sam and I can’t?” she wonders, shoving some of Cas’s shirts into a drawer beside the twin-sized bed.

          “Guess Mom and Dad just assume fidelity,” says Sam.

          “Well, they’re right,” she says, “Like I could ever want anyone but you.”

          Sam pulls her into him and kisses her; Dean glances at Castiel and away.

          When Jess pulls away, she turns back to the other two, more questions on her tongue.

          “Then again, why aren’t you two allowed to share a room?” she asks. “Sam says you used to share a bed all the time in high school.”

          Cas casts a nervous glance at Dean before turning back to her, smoothing over his features into his usual perfectly calm facade. “We’re bigger now, and I have more stuff than a bag to sleep over with. I need the room.”

          The Winchester brothers visibly relax, while Jess just nods thoughtfully, apparently considering which question to next pose. Thankfully, Sam practically shoves something of Cas’s into her face, successfully distracting her as she grabs it and commences trying to find a place for it in the chest of drawers.

          They all converge downstairs for dinner an hour later. Dean grabs a seat between Cas and his mother, at the head of the table. Across from Dean sits Sam, who sits next to Jess, who’s next to John at the other head of the table. From the beginning, Cas seems to make it his personal mission to completely ruin him, sitting close enough to press their thighs together under the table and leaning too close when he reaches to pass the mashed potatoes to Sam.

          “So, Cas,” says John eventually, during a brief lull in the conversation, “what’s it been like, dropping out of school?”

          “Dad,” says Dean warningly. Under the table, he slips a hand over Cas’s.

          Cas glances at him, squeezes his hand appreciatively, and lets go. Dean furrows his brow and turns back to his father.

          “I’m just saying,” John says defensively, and apparently their exchange has gone unnoticed.

          “It’s been really good for me, actually,” says Castiel in a relatively measured voice. “I’ve managed to work through a significant portion of my novel without the added expense and distraction of classes.”

          “You’re writing a novel?” Jess intercedes, spooning corn into her mouth. “That’s so awesome, what’s it about?”

          “Angels and demons,” he says promptly, ignoring the foot Dean edges over his. “Growing up in my type of household, I’m well-versed enough in the mythology to bend it to my liking. Essentially, they’re skirmishing all over the globe; after they trigger the apocalypse, a few separate groups of survivors attempt to drive out the remaining deities and devils.”

          “Religious dystopian future,” she says, grinning and bobbing her head. “That’s awesome.”

          “I’ll send you an early copy when I’m done writing, once it’s been through editing,” he says cheerfully, kicking Dean’s foot away from him.

          The children all attempt to help clear the table after all of the food has been consumed or set aside as leftovers, but Mary shoos them away vehemently—all except for John, whom she ensnares and assigns dish washing duty. The kids gratefully escape upstairs, promising to stay together; after exchanging quiet warnings to be careful and stay quiet, Dean and Sam part ways and lock themselves in their separate rooms with their partners.

          By the time Dean shuts the door and turns around, Castiel has already crossed the room, trailing his fingers over Dean’s childhood belongings—everything he hadn’t deemed necessary to bring to school. Dean pads over to him and fastens his hands on his waist. Cas turns around, and, although he returns Dean’s kiss, he keeps it chaste and reserved.

          “Come on,” Dean complains when Cas pulls away, “I’ve gone all _day_ without your mouth and I’m dying for a hit.”

          “I’m not a cigarette,” says Cas, rolling his eyes. “And you’ve gone longer than that before.”

          “That doesn’t mean I like it. And I’m not usually surrounded by happy couples making out in front of me.”

          “First of all,” says Cas, disengaging from Dean’s space and going back to examining his possessions, “no one was actually making out in front of us. Second of all, we’re not going to do anything unseemly while your brother is two doors away and your parents are on the floor below us. We’re supposed to be pretending that we’re just friends, remember?”

          “Yeah, but you’ve never looked so good as you do when I’m not supposed to touch you,” says Dean, raking a hand through his hair.

          “Well, you’ll just have to get over your strange obsession with illicit affairs,” he says, much calmer than Dean would like. “We’re _not_ messing around while we stay here.”

          “Even after hours?” he asks, tugging fruitlessly at Cas’s belt loops.

          “You’ve never been a quiet fuck a day in your life,” says Cas, stepping back again and examining an old paper that Dean wrote for English in tenth grade. “Your use of rhetoric is seriously lacking, by the way.”

          “Leave sophomore year Dean alone,” he says, snatching the essay out of his hands. “He was having a rough time. That was the year after I saw you kissing Meg Masters the spring before, and I was…working through some stuff.”

          “You were spiraling,” Cas accuses, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “You thought I was straight and you were in love with a straight boy and you were _spiraling_.”

          Dean makes a face and averts his eyes, shoving the paper into the back of a drawer. Cas ignores his embarrassment, continuing to riffle through everything on his desk and examine his childhood possessions, one by one, while Dean stares at the back of his head and watches him work.

          “So, uh,” Dean starts, scratching at the back of his head, “when did you—when did you fall in love with me?”

          Cas turns around and leans back against the desk, reaching out for him and sliding his hands from where they land on Dean’s elbows down to his own hands, tugging him closer.

          “Remember when you were seven and you hid in my mother’s bushes speculating that your brother was infected with lycanthropy?”

          Dean nods, laughs. “You came out of your house in spider-man pajamas looking for bugs, but when you noticed me you crawled in next to me asking if I wanted a soda. But when I asked for Doctor Pepper, you only had root beer and Pepsi.”

          “Since then, basically. Although, I might have lied about that a bit, actually,” he admits, looking down, his face reddening. “My mother remembered how I kept staring at the freckle-faced neighbor boy while he waited for the bus on the corner, so when she noticed him hiding in our garden she sent me out to invite him in for lunch.”

          “You didn’t invite me in for lunch,” Dean reminds him.

          Cas shrugs. “I already knew I was gay and my sister was prettier than me. I didn’t want to share.”

          Dean laughs with his head thrown back, curling his fingers into Cas’s front pockets and jerking him forward. “Oh my god, you were peeing on me!”

          “What? I didn’t—”

          “You were!” Dean crows. “You were _marking your territory_! Oh my god! You tried to claim me when I was seven!”

          “I did _not_ ,” says Cas, flushing again.

          Dean grins and pushes forward to kiss him, once, twice, ten times, before Cas grudgingly reciprocates.

          “One question,” he asks eventually, still kissing him between syllables. “If you already knew you liked dudes when we met, why did you make out with Meg when we were freshmen?”

          Cas shrugs and leans back against the desk, hands around the edge. Dean yanks at his jeans again, but Cas refuses to let him drag him into anything past their previous light kissing, keeping a firm grip on the wood beneath his fingers.

          “I didn’t want anyone to know,” he says. “I figured the best way to make sure nobody ever questioned my preferences was to make sure someone caught me with a girl. The earlier it was, the sooner I could get it over with.”

          “Oh yeah, making out with hot chicks—there’s a punishment.”

          “Shut your mouth or I’ll go seduce Jessica,” says Cas, smacking him in the chest. “The point is, I didn’t really mean for _you_ to catch us. I figured when rumor got around, you’d believe me if I denied it.”

          “You were going to lie to me?”

          “I was in love with you!” he says, throwing up his hands. “I didn’t want you to think I was straight! You know, just in case.”

          “Well, someone got lucky then,” says Dean, extricating one hand to anchor in Cas’s hair and pull him up for another kiss.

          “I’ll congratulate you later,” says Cas, shoving at his shoulders and pulling away, flopping down on Dean’s bed with his arms spread. Dean starts to crawl over him, but Cas shoves him sideways so that he falls onto his back beside him.

          “ _No_ sex of any kind,” Cas reminds him sharply, jabbing him in the ribs. “One more time and I’m filing for sexual harassment.”

          “You love me,” Dean scoffs, reaching out to card his hand through Cas’s hair.

          “I tolerate you,” he corrects, rubbing the hem of Dean’s shirt between his fingers. “On occasion I also use you for your body.”

          They lay staring at the ceiling, talking, and occasionally playing with their hands, until around eight when his mother knocks on the door.

          “Dessert time,” she sing-songs, examining them on the bed, laying down with their hands twined. “Get up before your father comes up to get you. We’re all craving sugar and John doesn’t need to assume that you two are getting up to anything while we’re all home _and_ awake.”

          “Don’t worry, Mom,” says Dean, sitting up and releasing Cas. “We already decided to pretend that nothing’s going on while we’re here.”

          “Of course,” she says, smiling softly. “Come down soon, boys.” She closes the door, and they hear her retreat down the hall to Sam’s room.

          They meet the other three in the hallway outside Dean’s room, and all beg Mary not to mention that they haven’t been hanging out together for the past hour or two. She shakes her head, but not in a particularly admonishing way, and leads the four of them down the stairs back through to the dining room, where a cheesecake, a cake, and a plate of cookies rests on the table. They all climb back into the seats they occupied at dinner and immediately reach for slices and cookies, too busy cutting out pieces of cheesecake and pulling cake toward themselves to start conversations. Partway through dessert, Dean leans over and breaks off a piece of one of Cas’s chocolate-covered oatmeal cookies, smirking in an extremely self-satisfied fashion when Cas turns to look at him.

          “Get your own!” he shouts, shoving Dean out of his space.

          “You took the last one,” he says, snatching the rest of the cookie and stuffing it into his mouth.

          “No I didn’t!” he protests, elbowing him in the chest and reaching to steal a forkful of his cheesecake. “I took the _third_ to last one. Your brother took two before you decided you wanted one!”

          “Thanks for selling me out,” Sam says drily, kicking him underneath the table.

          “You took one for Jess,” Cas points out. “That’s romantic.”

          “My hero,” says Jess, rolling her eyes. “Knight of the Cookies.”

          “If you don’t appreciate it, I’ll throw this at our dog,” says Sam, glaring around his bite of cake.

          “We don’t have a dog,” Mary says from her side of the table, her brow furrowing.

          “I meant Dean.”

          Dean kicks at him while everyone else laughs, then slouches over and shovels more sweets into his mouth until they all quiet down. Even through his own laughter, Cas reaches down and rubs his hand up and down Dean’s thigh a few times, then squeezes his knee and lets go. Even though it’s short and inconsequential, Dean appreciates the gesture, acknowledging that these types of interactions will be short-lived and rare over the next week.

          After helping clean up, the kids all run back upstairs. This time, however, Mary follows them; she warns them to go to bed alone and not separate into couples before pushing past them to her own bedroom to get changed into more comfortable clothing. They all shrug at each other and divide anyway, although Jess and Cas promise to meet each other back in the guest room in half an hour.

          “You know how Sam is,” she says when she pulls him aside, ignoring the brothers watching them suspiciously across the hall. “If you don’t come save me, he’ll trap me there all night, and then John will find us and slit his throat while simultaneously throwing me from the second story window.”

          “I know how the Winchesters operate,” says Cas, rolling his eyes in commiseration. “Don’t worry, I’ll drag you from his claws and smuggle you back to our room.”

          She smiles prettily, thanks him, and pulls Sam back into his room. Dean waits until their door slams shut before pulling Cas close.

          “Look at them,” he half-growls beside his ear, “ _she’ll_ be the one keeping _him_ on lockdown.”

          “Shut up,” says Cas, pushing Dean backward into his room.

          Dean grabs his wrists to keep him plastered to his chest as he falls back into his bedroom, then kicks his door shut and pushes Cas backward against the wood, capturing his lips with his own. Cas hums contentedly against his mouth and slides his hands into his back pockets, groping his ass, but just as Dean pushes his tongue into Cas’s mouth, someone knocks on the door.

          Cas shoves Dean off him so quickly that he trips over something on his floor and Cas has to grab his hand to stop him from falling on his back. The knocking intensifies, so after ascertaining that Dean is balanced, Cas opens the door to reveal John, glaring disapprovingly as them.

          “What’s going on?”

          “Nothing, sir,” says Dean immediately, standing up straighter. “We were just saying goodnight, then Cas was going to leave so that we could catch some sleep.”

          “Good,” he says gruffly, and then his tone softens considerably. “I’ll see you in the morning, boys.”

          “Goodnight, sir,” they say simultaneously.

          John gives them one more significant look before smiling slightly and shutting the door.

          Cas pulls him in for one more kiss before drawing back, removing Dean’s hands from his hips and reaching blindly for the doorknob behind him.

          Dean groans and reaches for him again. “Stay for like, five minutes,” he says, pulling him in and kissing the skin underneath his ear.

          “I can’t,” says Cas, scrunching his face up. “We’ve now been yelled at _twice_.”

          “What are you, fourteen?” Dean laughs, face still buried in his neck, tongue now joining his teeth against his throat. “Are you afraid of my parents?”

          “It’s more of a healthy respect,” he says thoughtfully, nails digging into the skin under Dean’s t-shirt. “Now please stop testing my self-control and let me go to sleep.”

          “Fine,” he sighs, laying his head on Cas’s shoulder.

          “Hey, unlike you, I can’t masturbate when I go to bed,” Cas points out, and Dean finally takes multiple steps back to laugh.

          “Try not to think too hard about that when you’re holed up with Jess,” he says, expression too sweet. Cas affords him one last kiss before leaving, and as Dean slips out of his jeans at last and underneath his sheets, he tries not to overthink about Cas and Jess conspiring together down the hall.

 

Thanksgiving dawns early—earlier than Dean would like, anyway. He wakes up to a light tapping on his forehead, but scrunches his face up uncomfortably and rolls over, only to have the sensation begin on the back of his neck. When he refuses to respond, hoping that whatever or whoever it is will just go away, the poking only shifts to underneath the covers and starts on his waist, where his shirt has lifted up a little in his sleep.

          “Go away,” he grumbles into his pillow.

          Someone laughs near his head and threads fingers through his hair, other hand occupied in jabbing lightly at his side. After several more seconds, Dean finally opens his eyes, only to see an upside-down, messy-haired head above him, grinning with chapped lips.

          “Oh good, you’re awake!” he says cheerily, withdrawing his hands. “Now get up!”

          “Go _away_ ,” Dean groans again, crushing his pillow over both ears. “It’s not even light out.”

          “It’s five a.m.!” says Cas, jumping up onto the bed and straddling his back with his knees. “Now come on, the farmer’s market opens in half an hour and if we’re not one of the first ones there, everything will be sold out. Mary made a list.”

          “I’ll eat microwavable burritos for dinner if you’ll just _leave me alone_.”

          “No chance,” he says, crossing his arms. “Up, get up, sleepyhead.”

          With Cas still sitting on top of him, turning onto his back is awkward, but he manages it, settling his hands on Cas’s thighs.

          “Baby, you are literally the most annoying person I have ever met.”

          “I pride myself on it,” says Cas, climbing off him. “Come on, if you’re ready to go in twenty minutes, I’ll _consider_ blowing you on the ride over.”

          Dean does manage to meet the time constraints, but because Cas is a deceptive asshole, he decides against the road head.

          “Come on, we’re in the Bible Belt,” he says, rolling his eyes from the passenger seat, arms resolutely folded over his chest again. “Public displays of sex is not advisable, much less between two men.”

          “You’re a tease,” says Dean, glaring ahead out of the front window.

          “I said I’d consider it,” Cas reminds him, fishing around his back pocket for the list that Dean’s mother wrote up for them last night. “That does not necessitate a guarantee.”

          “Tease,” he mutters anyway.

          “Sex-crazed animal,” he shoots back.

          “Oh please! Your libido’s higher than mine.”

          “At least I have some measure of self-control.”

          They bicker in an early-morning fashion the eight miles to the farmer’s market, where Cas cuts their faux argument short so that he can begin searching for the first ingredient on their list. He grabs Dean’s hand and pulls him down a random aisle of stalls, peering through the nonexistent autumn light to examine the contents in the various bins and boxes.

          “What can I do you gents for?” says a jolly voice behind them.

          Dean automatically jerks his hand out of Cas’s grip, not realizing, for a moment, how that looked. However, the woman who spoke does not seem to notice, or perhaps this group of people simply doesn’t care; either way, she beams at them over her stall of bananas and folds her hands over her large, apron-covered waist.

          “We need some ingredients for Thanksgiving,” says Dean, tugging the list out of Cas’s hand and passing it over into the woman’s outstretched hand.

          “Ooh, some holiday shoppers!” she trills delightedly, fishing glasses out of her pocket and sliding them over the bridge of her nose as she gazes down at their list.

          She points them in several different directions, indicating the approximate placement of each item they require. When she’s done, Dean remembers maybe half of her instructions, and hopes Cas has internalized the rest; either way, he thanks her and takes back the slip of paper.

          “Can I interest you boys in a bundle of bananas?” she asks as they turn to go. “Or maybe you’d like to try some of the latundan bunches?”

          “What’s a Latin banana?” asks Dean, peering into the box next to the regular fruit.

          “Latundan,” Cas corrects, pulling on his sleeve. “They’re an apple-banana hybrid.”

          “How the hell do—”

          “We’ll take three bunches,” Cas interrupts him, turning back to the vendor. “Mary’s going to love them.”

          The woman makes a bad joke about them going bananas over it, Cas laughs like he genuinely enjoys it, and Dean has to drag him away to continue compiling all of the ingredients that they were sent to retrieve.

          After about forty-five minutes, the area has started to really fill with shoppers—small children running through the aisles examining the different foods, young couples holding hands and swinging baskets, elderly people smiling at the vendors and making small talk with everyone they meet.

          Dean likes it in a quaint, small-town kind of way, but he’s always been more of an isolationist. He dawdles for a bit, enjoying Cas’s open appreciation for human interaction, but eventually leads him back to the car so that they can find some breakfast.

          After driving around for awhile, relatively aimlessly, Cas picking a random direction when they come to a turn or intersection without having any real indication of where they’re going. Only when they actually turn onto the street does Dean realize where they are.

          “Uh, Cas?” he says slowly, the car rolling to a stop. “I think you accidentally—”

          “—led us home,” he murmurs, gazing out the window.

          His eyes do not land on a two-story white house with the dark roof, where the Winchesters have lived for nearly thirty years, because they aren’t on the Winchesters’ street. Instead, he gazes out at a huge, four-floor house, pale blue painted walls stretching up toward the lightening sky. The large square windows seem to stare back at him, dark and cold and uninviting. Cas gazes out at the monstrous structure, transfixed; Dean reads something like heartbreak etched into the lines on his forehead and the set of his mouth.

          “Cas, we can turn—”

          “I want to go inside.”

          The statement is almost a whisper. For a second, Dean is sure he _did_ mishear, because he can’t imagine anything that that house might hold that could beckon Cas to it. He somehow thinks that taking his hand is a bad idea, but he wants to, anyway, as Cas silently unlocks the passenger side door and steps out onto the curb and into the breeze.

          Dean quickly kills the engine and scrambles out after him, managing to catch up to him a third of the way up the pathway. He takes his hand.

          “Baby,” he says, leaning over close to him. “It’s not even light out, not really. Will anyone be up?”

          “I don’t care,” says Cas, still staring at the house. “They’re all going to be home. And I have to see them.”

          “Cas—”

          “Dean,” he says, the finality evident. Dean shuts up.

          Dean does not expect anyone to actually answer the door when Castiel knocks, then rings the bell. However, he stands and waits with him, tapping his foot and staring blankly at the white door in front of them, until finally someone actually opens it.

          The girl inside is three years older than them, clad in a plain white t-shirt and comfortable-looking blue pajama pants. She brushes a piece of flame-colored hair out of her squinted eyes, which she rubs, too hard.

          “It’s not even seven,” she grumbles, staring at her feet so that she doesn’t have to face the light from the outside world coming through the door. “What are you doing here?”

          Cas looks in physical pain; Dean can’t think of anything to say first. When neither of them answer, the girl finally looks up. She drops her hands.

          “Oh my god.”

          Apparently disregarding Dean completely, she focuses all of her attention on her brother, standing in the doorway without moving at all.

          “At least she isn’t yelling,” Dean mutters, elbowing Cas.

          “Holy shit. Holy shit,” she says, shaking her head, apparently to dispel her inanimateness. “Shit, guys, come in.”

          “I don’t know if your—” Dean starts, but Cas releases his hand and steps over the threshold without a second thought.

          Anna ushers them into the kitchen, looking around as they go as though terrified of someone lurking in the shadows. Dean notices, but he does not mention her uneasiness until they are situated properly—Anna perched on the countertop, Cas standing awkwardly stiff next to her, Dean sprawled in a turned-out chair by the table.

          “Is your uncle home?” asks Dean while they wait for the coffee maker to beep.

          She grants him a small, almost guilty smile, like she recognizes her own surreptitiousness from before. “Don’t worry guys, you’re safe. Zachariah won’t be back until this afternoon.”

          “Speaking of, where is the evil dick?” asks Dean, ignoring the annoyed look that Cas shoots him. “Out taking the flying monkeys for a walk?”

          “Dean,” Cas starts admonishingly, but Anna seems unfazed.

          “He’s at a business meeting in Wichita,” she says, that small smile still on her face, almost like she approves of his cheek. “It’s just me and Gabriel.”

          “Where’s Uriel and Balthazar? Or Naomi?”

          “Balthazar’s been at Rafe and Rachel’s since Thursday. I think Hael’s there, too, probably with Virgil and Michael—only I think Zachariah thinks he’s staying with Joshua at his cabin, you know the old one with the pretty arboretum? So don’t say anything. The other brother’s at his girlfriend’s since Uncle Fuckface is out, and the evil step-mother took the king on her magic carpet,” she says, rolling her eyes.

          “That’s mixing a lot of Disney metaphors there,” says Dean, and Anna laughs.

          “They are apt descriptions though,” Cas chimes in, relaxing just barely and going to stand by Dean at the table.

          They sit in the kitchen chatting for an hour, and are all on their third cup of coffee when someone else stumbles down the stairs, wearing white pajama bottoms two sizes too big that pool around his feet.

          “Who the fuck are you talking to, Anna?” he shouts from the bottom of the stairs.

          “Your mom’s chest hair!” she yells back, taking another large sip of her coffee.

          “Stop watching Mean Girls before bed,” he calls, ambling around the corner and rubbing his eyes. “It makes you sound like a prepubescent teenage girl.”

          Anna hops off the counter and shoves a spare cup of coffee into her brother’s hands.

          “Play nice, Gabriel, we’ve got guests,” she says, turning back to jump onto the countertop.

          “Holy shit,” he says, lowering his mug. “Bro…what the hell are you doing here?”

          Cas stands and makes an awkward twitch with his arms, almost as though he wants to embrace him, or shake his hand. He manages neither, and after they stare at each other for several seconds, Dean takes pity on him and gets to his feet, arm outstretched.

          “Hey, you’re Gabriel, right?” he says as they shake hands.

          “Yep. You must be the infamous Dean.”

          “That’s me,” he says, stepping back to grab Cas’s hand in solidarity.

          “The same Dean who got him kicked out of the house?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

          “That’s me,” he says again, smile fading.

          Anna kicks her brother, looking like she wants to throw her coffee over his head. “Gabriel!” she snaps, tossing a spare napkin at him in lieu of permanently burning his face. “Shut the fuck up, assface. We agreed that wasn’t their fault.”

          “Actually, I stayed out of that argument,” he says, scrounging for a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

          “Well, you’re a pansy,” says Anna, finishing off her third cup of caffeine.

          “Well,” says Gabriel, mimicking his sister’s tone, “when Zach asked if anyone in this house _didn’t_ like men, you were the only one who could come up with an appropriately sassy comeback that also had a ring of truth.”

          “You’re just jealous that you don’t have the monopoly on bitchy jokes,” she says, giggling.

          He makes a face at his sister and drops into a seat          at the head of the table, kicking his feet up and stuffing a too-large spoonful into his mouth. Anna clears the counter to lie down on her back across the marble, and Dean nudges Cas down into a seat, settling him in to hang out longer with his family.

          After another few hours, wherein they finish breakfast and move into the living room to watch horrible early-morning holiday movies, Cas announces that they have to go because they were only supposed to be gone for an hour or two at most.

          The two siblings still allowed at home lead the other pair to the door, Anna clutching Castiel’s hand like a lifeline.

          “Come back soon,” she says, leaning up to kiss Cas’s cheek.

          “That’s not technically allowed,” he says, turning from his sister to embrace his brother obligingly.

          “We’ll sneak you in,” says Gabriel, winking and popping his lollipop out of his mouth to get closer to Cas. He turns to Dean, sucking on the candy again and eying him up and down. “You can come too, sourpatch. And chin up, kiddo, I’m sure my baby bro knows some tricks to cheer you up.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively at them.

          “That’s completely disgusting,” says Anna, swatting at his arm. “Now let these little lovebirds go home, okay? I’m sure they don’t want you harassing them about their sex life. Even if they do go at it like crazy nymphos, according to Cas.”

          “Dear god, let us leave,” Dean groans, lacing his and Cas’s hands together and tugging at him, to no effect whatsoever.

          “Anna, that’s absolutely horrendous,” says Cas, rolling his eyes in apparent disinterest while Dean throws his head back and glowers at the ceiling. “And all I said was that we could probably win in a contest for weirdest places to have sex. And _only_ because you asked, and _only_ because I’ve visited him at college and we currently live in the city, so there are plenty of opportunities.”

          “You didn’t have to list the top five most public areas,” she says, smirking and crossing her arms.

          “I did not! You asked me for proof that I knew more positions than you did.”

          Gabriel laughs. “Actually, you included both lists. With a sub-bullet list about which you’ve tried. And which ones Dean won’t do.” He is the most obnoxious and disgusting seventeen year old in the world.

          Despite his extremely red cheeks, Dean glares over at his boyfriend. “Excuse me, what have I ever denied you?”

          Gabriel laughs. “Trust me, buddy, just the thought of it makes me ill. And I live with _Balthazar_ , keep in mind. Cassy, tell him and I promise I’ll vomit on your shoes.” He opens the door for them and gestures them out. “Now get out. We have to cleanse the house of your dirty, dirty natures before our reigning king returns this afternoon.”

          They exchange last hugs before Gabriel all but slams the door at their backs; the loud admonitions from Anna follow them back down to the car. When the door reopens, they turn around in time to see Anna stick her head outside.

          “Happy Thanksgiving!” she calls.

          “Happy Thanksgiving,” they chorus back at her, and even Gabriel sticks his head outside to wave at them.

          By the time they pull back into the Winchesters’ driveway, the clock on the dashboard reads noon. Mary waves away their apology, knowing them well enough to have assumed that they would get brutally sidetracked. They unload the groceries on the kitchen counter and then join John, Sam, and Jess around the island to stick forks into the baked brie that Mary spent the morning making. They migrate to the living room to watch television while the baked bread sets—for once, everyone agrees on what to watch and they turn on the game—and then back to the kitchen to have a few slices. This rotation goes for the better part of four and a half hours, up until Mary cuts them off so that they’ll all have some room for dinner at six. Grumbling, they retreat back to the couch. After about half an hour, Cas gets up to get water, and when he doesn’t return, Dean goes to search for him.

          He finds him in the kitchen, an apron tied around his waist, helping Mary prepare stuffing for the turducken (assuming the overstuffed bird in bird in bird can fit anything else inside). Dean leans against the doorframe and watches him work. Eventually, Mary looks over and notices him standing there and beckons him inside.

          “Wipe that affectionate smile off your face and come help,” she says, tossing him a whisk. “You can make the mashed potatoes.” She nods over at one of the bowls on the counter and, resigned to helping despite his better wishes, Dean saunters over to join them.

          Dean loves Cas when he’s cooking. He doesn’t do it often because he doesn’t generally have the time, but when he does get a chance, it’s one of the only activities that partially removes the stick from his ass. He moves around the kitchen without speaking much, occasionally drifting over to improve Dean’s technique.

          “How can I be mixing wrong?” Dean asks huffily.

          Cas shakes his head and lays his hands over Dean’s on the whisk, moving it at a slightly faster pace so that it hits the edges of the bowl and spirals into the inside.

          “Because you’re too alpha male to admit you like to cook, so you never practice,” he says, kissing his cheek before returning to his own task.

          Dean protests this accusation, but gives up when both Cas and Mary start laughing at him, claiming it’s true before starting in on all his faults, as boyfriends and mothers are wont to do when they get together.

          Eventually they get dinner sorted and call everyone else in from the other room. Mary confiscates John’s beer and pours out water and iced tea for everyone, then orders them all to the table.

          They follow the customary ritual of giving thanks, which Dean loathes; he can never think of anything substantial, so he says his family and makes a face when everyone starts to coo teasingly at him.

          “Alright, alright, someone else say something, _please_ ,” he says, batting away his mother’s hand ruffling his hair.

          As usual, Cas comes to his rescue; he takes his hand under the table and announces, “I’m thankful for all of you, for taking me in when nobody else was willing to.”

          Dean squeezes his hand. Everyone is smiling over at him, Mary a little tearily.

          “Excuse me, where was the heartfelt admissions of love when I said that?” says Dean. He’s _not_ whining.

          “You were just saying that cos you had nothing else to say,” says Sam, balling up his napkin and tossing it at his brother’s head.

          “Alright, alright, somebody else!”

          They finish going around the table and finally dig in, and for a minute the table is a silent tangle of limbs as everyone grabs bowls, spoons food, and passes everything around to everyone else.

          Conversation is scarce as everyone eats enough to make themselves vomit afterwards. They murmur sleepily at each other while they all clean up, slowly succumbing to tryptophan comas as they transfer the few available leftovers into Tupperware containers or dump it into the garbage if there isn’t enough to save. They shove the leftovers into the refrigerator and the empty utensils and plates and bowls into the dishwasher, then mumble vaguely about taking a nap and meander upstairs, one by one.

          Out of habit more than anything, Cas follows Dean into his room and collapses beside him on the bed.

          “I’m gonna be sick,” Dean moans, shuffling closer and hiding his face in Cas’s neck.

          Unable to muster the energy to really move away, Cas turns his head the other way and says, “If you throw up on me, I swear on our holy father I will smite you.”

          They lay like that, complaining and grumbling incoherently, for nearly an hour. Dean’s just drifting off to sleep when Cas pushes himself up to his hands and knees.

          “Where are you going?” His voice is muffled against the sheets, but he manages to wrap one hand around Cas’s wrist.

          “I’m falling asleep,” says Cas, prying his arm away and getting to his feet. “I need to change and find my own bed.”

          “Can’t you stay here?”

          Cas leans over and kisses the top of his head. “You know as well as I do that that’s not exactly feasible,” he sighs.

          Dean grumbles something into his pillow.

          “I love you too,” says Cas, rolling his eyes.

          Dean manages to pass out before he even hears the door to his room shut, still clad in jeans—which he’ll regret in the morning—and without even brushing his teeth.

 

The rest of the week flies by. By the time Saturday rolls around, Dean already misses his family and wishes he could stay longer. He really doesn’t get a chance to see them often enough.

          “Can’t you boys stay any longer?” says Mary, without any real inquiry. She frowns as though she knows that they can’t, but she can’t really resist asking.

          “Sorry, Mom,” says Dean, wrapping his arms around her. “We’ve got a flight tomorrow morning at five, and Dallas is too far away to leave from here.”

          “We’ll call you from the motel room,” Cas promises, pulling away from the hug Jess has captured him in. They have only known each other a week, but Dean can already tell that he and Sam are both going to suffer from the friendship that they have discovered, sharing a room and being in generally close quarters all week long.

          They finish saying their goodbyes and get into the car, still waving at the family gathered around the front steps.

          It’s an eight hour ride to Greenville, where they have already booked a room; they take turns driving, switching the radio station accordingly because Cas likes to take full advantage of Dean’s rule about music in the car.

          They pull up at just before nine in the afternoon. Dean wakes Cas from where he’s dozing in the passenger seat and they both unload their suitcases, get a key from the front desk, and throw their bags into their room by the bed.

          “Up for a few drinks?” Dean asks, almost before they put everything down.

          “I think I need a shower first,” says Cas, rubbing his ass where it aches from sitting in the car all day.

          Dean eyes him as he strips off his shirt and starts for the bathroom.

          “Am I allowed to join you?” he asks, unable to help himself.

          Cas peers around the bathroom door, eyes narrowed, skin showing. “I thought we agreed to stay hands off until we were back in the city,” he says, and his voice has an accusing edge to it that Dean ignores.

          “But we’ve got this whole room to ourselves,” he hedges, eyes glued to the patch of skin he can see around the door frame. He licks his lips subconsciously.

          “But the walls are thin and people are already suspicious that two grown men booked a single room with a king-sized bed,” says Cas, but he too is eying Dean hungrily, and Dean can tell that the hands-off week is starting to weigh on him as well.

          He makes a face that is basically a pout, except he would never admit to reducing himself to that kind of pettiness. “Can we at least join the mile high club on the plane ride back?”

          Cas grins. “I’ll think about it,” he says, but his expression has agreement written all over it.

          That promise is pretty much all that gets Dean through the ten minutes that it takes Cas to shower and get changed, wherein his thoughts stray almost exclusively to the miles of bare skin in the next room and all the things he could be doing instead of laying on the bed watching cable.

          Finally Cas exits, still running a towel through his hair, another wrapped around his waist.

          “Are you trying to kill me?” Dean asks, watching him covetously as he extracts jeans from one of the suitcases and pulls them on.

          “Only a little,” Cas teases, fishing around for a shirt. When he finally pulls one out, it’s one of Dean’s band t-shirts from high school. Like most of the clothes that Cas has appropriated, it’s just a little too small on Dean but slightly too big on Cas, but he likes to sleep in them anyway.

          “Now you’re _really_ trying to kill me,” Dean groans, slamming his head back against the headboard. If there’s one thing that he can’t resist even more than Cas in skinny jeans, which he mercifully left at home, it’s Cas in anything he used to own.

          Cas laughs and extends a hand, pulling him up from the bed and affording him a small, wholly unsatisfying kiss.

          “Only a lot,” he says, smirking. “Ready to get hammered?”

          “Born ready,” says Dean, reluctantly releasing his hand as he follows him out into the hallway.

          They wander down the road, but only have to walk about half a block down before they find a bar, loud and unruly and exactly what they need to unwind.

          It’s crowded when they enter it, dimly lit but not so dark that they can’t see. The pretty, curvy bartender zeroes in on them when they take a seat at the bar—well, she hones in on Dean, anyway, ignoring Cas almost entirely as she asks for their order.

          “What can I get you boys?” she all but purrs, leaning over the bar so that her face is less than a foot from Dean’s, and she’s clearly addressing only him, despite her words.

          “Yeah, sweetheart—”

          “Casey,” she interrupts, smiling.

          “Casey,” he repeats, matching her expression. “Just a beer for me, thanks. Cas?”

          Reluctantly, she turns to Cas, although she doesn’t actually move away from Dean.

          “Uh, bring us a round of shots, actually,” he says, narrowing his eyes at her.

          She raises her eyebrows but doesn’t question it, turning to fill their order and hit on some other customers.

          “Alright, no taking it slow,” says Dean, chuckling. “What’s gotten into you?”

          Cas shrugs, not meeting his eye. “Nothing.”

          Dean arches an eyebrow and elbows him, swiveling in his seat to get the measure of him more efficiently. He drops his lighthearted tone as he asks, “What’s up, baby?”

          His cheeks tinge a very becoming shade of red. “I don’t like the way she was flirting with you. And I get it, you have to siphon off your extra energy somewhere, but—I mean—you don’t have to flirt back so blatantly, right in front of me. Okay?”

          Dean presses his lips together to keep from laughing. This method almost works. “Are you jealous?”

          Cas turns away, drumming his fingers against the countertop. “No,” he says, but not forcefully enough to dispel the contrary evidence of his reddening cheeks.

          Dean laughs despite himself and spreads his hands. “Babe, you know I would if I could. But _you_ were the one who made me swear off that sweet bod, which means all subsequent heartbreak is on you.”

          Cas rolls his eyes, face still stained rouge, and graciously accepts the alcohol that Casey chooses that moment to deliver. When Dean completely disregards her in favor of examining Cas’s profile, she leaves, scowling. Castiel immediately downs three shots before pushing half of the remaining glasses in front of Dean.

          “Did you intend to join me?”

          They polish off the remaining shots in less than five minutes. Dean wipes the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth after the last one, then gestures to Casey to refill them, granting her a persuasive smile as encouragement. She affords him a simpering grin and obliges him, while Cas looks away pointedly and taps his foot against one of the rings across the legs of his stool.

          After they each have another set of shots before them, Dean nudges Cas and then throws an arm over his shoulder so that when he turns his head to whisper, his mouth is right by his ear.

          “I’m just getting us a discount. Relax. Drink. I’ll make it up to you later.”

          Cas fists his hands over the thighs of his jeans, determinedly not looking at him. Dean shakes his head and starts to gently stroke his fingers over the back of Cas’s neck and what hair he can reach from where his arm rests over his shoulder.

          “I _promise_ I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs, rubbing his thumb lightly over the soft patch of skin beneath his ear.

          Cas shoves him back, but without any real anger.

          “You’re disgusting,” he says anyway, starting in on his new row of shots.

          “I’m not even flirting with her,” Dean protests, as Cas swallows drink after drink without even pausing for a breath. “You just don’t like me smiling at other people.”

          Cas swallows a third shot hard and says, “Only because the only smile you have is completely lecherous.”

          Dean shrugs. “I do what I have to do. No tits equals no free drinks, so I take what I can get when the bartender likes me. You know I don’t mean it.”

          Cas is ten shots deep by now, so his boundaries have significantly lowered. He swivels in his seat and frowns, dragging a hand down Dean’s side.

          “I know,” he says in a voice that is almost a whine, “But I’m experiencing serious withdrawal.”

          Dean laughs and snatches one of the remaining shots away, throwing it down with practiced ease. “I know,” he says, covering Cas’s knee with his hand and squeezing. “Me too, baby. We’ve only got a few more hours, though.”

          Cas makes a face and eyes him like he wants to climb into his lap right in the middle of the bar. “Hours?”

          Dean slides his hand further up his thigh and Cas slips his underneath his jacket, bundling the bottom of his shirt in his fist. Dean squeezes once, then takes both of Cas’s hands, removes them from his body, and folds them on Cas’s lap.

          “Cas, I’m serious. You have been the voice of reason all week, just because I’m an animal. But now that you’re smashed and needy, I have to be the one to say hands off, okay? So seriously, _hands off_. ”

          Cas makes a face. “I hate you,” he says, sighing, and turns back to the bar. “Casey! Another round of shots!”

          Dean shakes his head at her and smiles, as though apologizing for the unruliness of his friend and his general inability to corral him.

          “Just beers, thanks,” he says, and she winks at him and turns to fetch the new order.

          Dean finishes off the rest of the shots by the time she comes back, so as to catch up to Cas’s number. Casey slams the drinks on the bar in front of them and sashays away, and Dean leans over so that, when he turns his head to whisper, his mouth is right by Cas’s ear.

          “You’ll thank me in the morning,” he promises. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the stick is out of your ass, but we’ve got to leave in a few hours and you have to be coherent enough to walk onto the plane.”

          Cas ignores him and twists the top off his beer, taking a swig, and Dean follows suit, then curls a hand around Cas’s, just for a second, and lets go before anyone can notice.

          Casey comes back to replace their beers with new ones when they finish, and Cas spends the entire time that Dean talks to her scratching his fingers up the inside of Dean’s thigh underneath the overhang of the bar. Dean tightens a hand over his wrist and grits his teeth until Casey walks away.

          “Are you being deliberately difficult?” asks Dean, nails digging into his skin.

          Cas smiles innocently and creeps his hand further up his leg and underneath the hem of his shirt, spreading his fingers across his skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, fiddling with his beer like he isn’t silently torturing Dean with his free hand.

          Dean clutches at his beer with both hands and tries to ignore it, but all Cas does in response to this behavior is curl his fingers beneath the tops of Dean’s jeans and tug gently. Dean glares at him; Cas laughs a little.

          “Alright, I’m working on a strategy,” he concedes. Dean rolls his eyes.

          “Baby—”

          “Shh,” he says, kind of leaning into him but more just slumping against his shoulder due to the depth of his alcohol consumption. “You said keep quiet, so no pet names.”

          “Yeah, you’re the picture of restraint,” says Dean, pulling Cas’s hand away from his jeans, but Cas refuses to easily release him afterwards, and Dean has to use both hands to push Cas off.

          Dean swivels back to the bar and finishes off his drink in just a few more pulls, then fists a hand in Cas’s sleeve. “Come on, buddy, it’s time to get you back to the motel.” He shoves Cas’s drink into his hand to encourage haste.

          Cas raises an eyebrow at him over the rim of his beer and takes a measured sip, watching him all the while. “You’re bossy,” he says, apparently unaffected by Dean’s intentions.

          “And you’re _drunk_ ,” says Dean, choosing to ignore the way he slurs his own words.

          Cas doesn’t. “So are you,” he accuses, poking him in the ribs. “I’m finally loosening up. _Enjoy_ it.”

          Dean groans. “Trust me, I’d love to,” he says, unconsciously leaning into the hand that Cas starts raking through his hair, “but this isn’t the—”

          “Dean. It’s fine,” Cas promises. He abandons his beer so that he can fully turn toward him—and as soon as he gets both hands on him, Dean is lost.

          He fits one hand into Dean’s front pocket, the other still tangled in his hair, but doesn’t kiss him; he keeps his lips close enough to tease him, far enough away to ensure his obedience. It’s the only infallible method to get Dean to follow him as he walks backward until he finds a dark enough corner, at which point he promptly spins around, forcing Dean against the wall.

          “You were right,” Cas hums, lips on his neck. Dean looks around just long enough to ascertain that no one is watching them (they are certainly not the only ones in the bar up to something nefarious in the corner) before he tips his head back to properly enjoy the kisses placed there. “You are at your most attractive when I’m supposed to keep my hands to myself.”

          “I’m always right,” says Dean, snaking both hands into his back pockets and groping shamelessly.

          Cas huffs a laugh against his skin and finishes the bruise he was creating before licking a strip up to his jaw and capturing his lips instead. Dean makes a small, happy sound and pushes a thigh between Cas’s legs at the same time that he pushes his tongue into his mouth. At nineteen, they’re both just about done growing, and Cas is only maybe two inches shorter than him, so Dean doesn’t really have to tip Cas’s head up to reach his mouth comfortably.

          “Does this mean I’m allowed to take you home now?” Dean asks, quirking a smile.

          “I don’t know,” says Cas, biting at the barely-burgeoning scruff on his jaw and neck. “What do you intend to do with me when we get there?”

          “I should probably put you to bed,” Dean admits, rucking up Cas’s shirt and scratching down his back.

          “Somehow I don’t think you’ll do that,” says Cas. He starts to just barely rut against the knee Dean shoved between them, coaxing Dean to move with him.

          For all that he grinds against him, Dean masterfully avoids mentioning it. “You don’t know! I’ll tuck you in and everything.”

          “I have my doubts,” says Cas, before pulling at his hair to reclaim his mouth.

          After a few minutes, Dean pulls away for real, as far as Cas will let him. He drops kisses down his jaw and asks, “Ready to go?”

          Cas pushes him back to look up at him with wide, lust-blown pupils, but he still manages to look almost innocent. “Will there be more of this involved?”

          “I think I could set something up,” says Dean. He dislodges his hands to wrap around one of Cas’s as he pulls back further.

          Cas smiles briefly and allows Dean to pull him out of the shadows. He holds up one finger and says, “Give me one second, I have to pee,” and unlatches his hand.

          “I’ll be outside,” Dean says, and he watches him flee for the bathroom before going out to find somewhere to sit in the parking lot.

          He finds a low wall out front to sit down on, and almost immediately lays on his back, drumming his hands against his thighs to the beat of the song stuck in his head.

          After about ten minutes, when Cas still hasn’t joined him, he’s started to drift into a light, unconcerned doze, tuning out the thrum of Texan nightlife. Dean sits up and glances, frowning, at the front of the building, concerned that Cas fell into a urinal or passed out drunk in a stall. He’s halfway to the entrance of the bar when he hears shouts from the alleyway between the bar and the adjoining pool hall. He almost doesn’t pause—he’s been in enough bar fights to know that they usually end up outside, bloody but not lethal, and that all participants have to work through their anger in an uninterrupted environment or it will just happen again the next night between different opponents. But then he hears him.

          He ducks into the alley in seconds and barely looks at who he’s up against before his fist connects into someone’s jaw. Dean turns to the others before the guy hits the floor, and quickly does a headcount; there are five men, counting the one on the ground, all in their mid- to late-twenties and built like linebackers. Dean vaguely remembers seeing them inside, seated around the table right next to where they sat at the bar.

          The thing is, Cas is no slouch; he hangs on Dean a lot and acts all needy, but away from their relationship—in which they’re somehow both whipped—he can kick some serious ass. In fact, he could probably take one or two of these guys alone—but there are five of them, and he’s a nineteen year old with no backup, and he had to be easy pickings, drunk and alone in the bathroom and still reeking of another man’s cologne.

          Dean decks another one before he even thinks about it, not landing it perfectly, then spins around do a quick search for Cas, whom he didn’t immediately see upon entering the alley. He finally spots him against the back fence.

          He’s strung up and blood-soaked, his shirt stained red in numerous places. His wrists are crudely tied with what looks like old wire, feet hanging a few inches off the ground so that the toes of his shoes brush the pavement. He’s either unconscious or close, as his head is lolling against his chest and his eyelids are fluttering, clearly unfocused.

          In the split second Dean requires to take him in, one of the other guys gets his bearings and knocks a punch into his stomach, then to his jaw, the hits in quick succession so that Dean careens against the brick wall beside him, tripping over the one he knocked out before. The other one he hit obviously wasn’t hurt enough to go down, and he starts in on Dean as he slams against the wall. Dean throws a misaimed punch at him, grazing his knuckles on something that doesn’t take, as the other guy hits him with a solid punch to the face seconds later. He feels the skin over his cheekbone open up, and knows his eye will blacken up by tomorrow.

          He manages to shove back the guy on top of him, slamming him with an uppercut to the underside of his chin that knocks his head back. He staggers the few feet into the other wall and then he, too, falls to the ground.

          Dean knows it’s a shitty move to pull in the middle of a fight, but he also knows how to pick his battles and he _knows_ that he’s going to lose as the other three start in on him, so he whips out his phone and dials the cops before any of them can land another punch.

          One of them notices the tracks his fingers are making across his keypad and points it out to his buddies; Dean’s kind of out of his from the multiple knocks to the head, but he registers them hauling the two men on the ground over their shoulders and scattering out of the alley and back toward the parking lot.

          “At least they’ve got solidarity,” he grunts.

          He clutches his ribs and slides down the wall, muttering a location to the woman on the other line before hanging up. Only then does he finally turn his head back to Cas, twitching uncomfortably against the fence. Slowly, digging his fingers into the brick until the tips break open and bleed, he hauls himself upright and stumbles toward the fence, the alcohol a low thrum against his skull in accordance with all his other injuries.

          He grabs at the fence when he reaches Cas, brushing his hands gently over the skin of his arms and neck, muttering his name.

          “I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you,” he repeats mindlessly, trying to untie the wire surrounding his wrists.

          When that fails, he gropes on the ground for something, anything to help him. The darkness hinders his quest, but he finally finds a sharp enough rock, and in a few quick slashes Cas falls forward and down. Dean catches him, sort of; they stagger backward until he hits a wall, and then he pulls them both to the ground as gently as he can. He hits the cement with a thud and lays Cas down, head on his lap, and brushes his fingers over the wounds he can now see on his neck in the low light. Small, stuttered bruises are already forming, looking more like finger marks than rope burn. Dean leans down to listen to his choked breathing, which is down to only a few gulping inhales a minute. His hands shake as they continue to assess his injuries.

          “You’re okay,” he says, and then he can hear his voice shaking, too. “You’re okay.”

          Cas blinks rapidly, clearly trying to get him into focus. Dean can no longer tell if he’s breathing or not, as his blood is pounding too loudly in his ears and his own breathing shallows with fear rather than critical condition.

          “Dean?” Cas croaks.

          Dean can’t come up with a fast enough answer and so chooses to say nothing at all, still repeating the same thing over and over and pressing kisses to his forehead.

          Cas opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out. Dean shushes him, the backs of his fingers stroking down his cheeks, skating over cuts on his face that Dean’s afraid was made by somebody else’s knuckles.

          “You’re okay,” he whispers again, and presses his lips to his forehead, and waits for the sound of sirens.


	3. leaving fury in its wake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm atheist and know about zero things about religion. Also, keep in mind the POV is Dean, and he's pretty sacrilegious. I mean absolutely no disrespect, and if I get something wrong, please correct me.

          It is three degrees outside, he can’t feel his toes, and his best friend was beautiful. This is all Dean knows, in the end.

          He feels a gloved hand slide into his and squeezes automatically, looking straight ahead through the sunglasses that glint with the steely glow from the cloudy winter afternoon, no sun or patch of blue sky in sight. His bare fingers ache from being in the cold, and he can feel the pads of his fingertips throbbing with the dull thrum of his heartbeat. He tugs at the collar of his three-piece suit, uncomfortable in about three different ways at the moment. He hoped, earlier, that the black of the suit might attract the sunlight and therefore some warmth, but he so far can’t even catch a break in that regard.

          “How are you doing?” Charlie asks quietly. The abnormal lack of exuberance stirs something deep within him, but he doesn’t look around.

          He opens his mouth but can’t think of anything to say, so he just shakes his head. She sighs and nods minutely.

          “It’s about to start,” she says after another few moments.

          He blinks and turns away from the headstone he’s been watching and lets her turn him around and lead him to underneath the awning a few yards away, where everyone else has gone to escape the snowfall. Charlie reaches up and brushes some snowflakes from his hair. She grins like she wants to say something, but he glances at her, and she closes her mouth like it might not be the time.

          Almost immediately, the minister leads them back down the row to where Dean was standing before, and he starts talking. Dean tunes out the speech, his vision blurring. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his eyes so that he can focus on the headstone in front of him. He feels fuzzy and oddly distant, like if he stops looking for even a second everything will disappear, and he’ll find himself alone in his apartment with no bruises and only his memory to promise that any of it ever happened. He absently raises a hand to touch the cut underneath his eye and presses down, reveling in the ache.

          Distantly, he notices everyone around him dispersing. Charlie stays beside him, reaching up to wipe his face every now and then and straightening his sunglasses afterwards. She stays until someone else joins them on her other side; the new arrival whispers something in her ear and tucks a strand of hair behind her own. Dean barely turns his face towards the young woman, keeping his attention on the gravestone, but he nods in her general direction, recognizing her profile in his peripheral vision. She offers a hello that he does not return. Charlie slips her hand from his and leans up to kiss him on the cheek. She murmurs something that he doesn’t hear and then turns away, linking arms with Dorothy and scurrying to the side to commiserate.

          After a few more minutes, someone else approaches. Dean pushes up his sunglasses to scrub a hand over his eyes, then drops them back down and turns to his most recent guest.

          “Hi Jess,” he croaks, voice hoarse from disuse over the past few hours.

          She smiles sympathetically and slides an arm through one of his, leaning her head against his shoulder.

          “Hi, Dean,” she sing-songs. She’s apparently unaffected by Dean’s lack of reciprocation with her physical comfort, as she squeezes his arm and digs her nails into his sleeve. “How are you holding up?”

          “Just fine,” he says, turning away.

          “No you’re not,” she sighs, tightening her arm. “Dean, it’s been a month. You don’t look any better.”

          “What’s the big deal? A month’s not a long time.”

          “I know. But you’ve been alone all this time. It can’t be good for you.”

          “I’m fine,” he says, jerking his arm in an attempt to loosen her grip on him. She doesn’t budge, but her expression of pity intensifies significantly. His expression pulls together, and he turns away so as not to hurt her feelings. It’s not directed at her specifically, but he can’t glare at a gesture.

          “Dean,” she says, pulling at him until he looks at her, “Please. Come back home for awhile. Take the rest of the semester off. You can go back next year.” The volume of her voice lowers. “You should be with family.”

          “My family’s gone,” Dean says hollowly, turning back to face forward. “The only important one anyway.”

          She is silent for a moment. When she appears to recollect herself, she says, “I know you don’t mean that,” in a tone so gentle and filled with pity that Dean automatically recoils. It gets even worse when she adds, tenderly, “You know, me and Sam, we’re here for you. All of us are. I don’t know if you noticed, but this place is pretty packed.”

          Dean makes a small grunt of acknowledgement, trying not to look at her.

          “Seriously, he was your best friend for over ten years. And you two were more in love than anyone I’ve ever met. Like, grosser than me and Sam. And once we made my friend literally vomit because she witnessed some unfortunate events when he came to visit me at school a few months ago.”

          He starts and turns back to her. “What? I—We weren’t—”

          She gives a choked laugh, genuine but filled with sympathy. “Dean, please. Only an idiot could miss the way you looked at him. Or the way he looked at you.”

          “Jess, that’s not—”

          She wraps her arm around his waist instead, then encircles her other arm around him, too, and hugs him into silence.

          “Our secret,” she promises. She squeezes him one more time and then slips her arms off of him. “But seriously, I know how much you loved him. But I’ll still never tell anyone.”

          He coughs and scratches at the back of his head. “Thanks.”

          “Come visit again soon, okay? We all really miss you.” Jess gives him a half-smile. “When you’re ready…when you want to come home, we’ll all be there for you, okay?” She stands there for a moment, raised onto her tiptoes to see into his eyes better, making sure he understands just how sincerely she means it. After a few seconds, she lowers herself back onto the flats of her feet and, without another word, turns to find Sam. Dean stares after her for a few seconds without really taking her in.

          Twenty minutes pass in a similar fashion. Although he pretty much just stands by staring at the headstone in front of him and trying not to think, a steady stream of people pass by and exchange a few words with him. He stares forward and tries to come up with passable conversation, mainly just waiting for them to leave him alone. He puts up with about fifteen people before someone takes his hand, gently tugs at him, and murmurs, “Come on, Dean.”

          Dean lets whoever it is lead him away, mostly because the pressure is soft enough to convince him but not so rough as to force him. He absently hears a door opening and then the light above him darkens considerably. A female voice by his side barks out orders, screaming, “Scram, you fucking idiots! We need this bathroom cleared!” A horde of feet rush past, then the door slams, and they are plunged into silence.

          The woman beside him steers him to the sinks and stations him there. As he stares forward into the mirror, he blinks into the glass until she comes into focus, fiery hair cascading in perfect lines over her shoulders.

          “Anna,” he says, surprised. She offers a partial smile and nods in acknowledgement.

          “Hello, Dean,” she says. He wishes people would stop using that tone of voice on him. “How are you feeling?”

          “I’m alive,” he says mildly, glad that he can relax a bit in her company. He’s known Anna since they were kids, and even though she’s worrying about him just as much as everyone else, he can’t be as snarky with the coworkers and members of the writing group and all the other people that he’s never even met.

          “That’s the achievement of the day,” she says. She manages to mangle a smile into something morose.

          He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Anna—I should be asking you how you’re doing. You probably need the comfort.”

          “God no! If I have to hear one more depressed hipster dressed in all black tell me that they’re ‘sorry for my loss,’ I might have to shoot myself.”

          “No way. It’s worse when they say that they wish they’d known him better,” says Dean, making a face that’s not exactly a smirk but that certainly holds more expression than the blank look he’s been maintaining all afternoon.

          “I know. It’s like, why did you even come if you don’t know him? If he was so great, why not hang out with him before?”

          “Because people are jerks,” he says, and she nods in agreement, rolling her eyes.

          They fall into companionable silence, staring into the mirror and trying to collect themselves. After a few minutes, Anna shakes her head.

          “Why do you keep pressing the cut under your eye?” she asks.

          He hesitates, and then haltingly tells her—voice still stuttering from so much disuse—exactly why he can’t stop digging his fingers into the cut, a hint of scabs still on his fingertips from where he pulled himself up the wall. He twitches, trying not to fully imagine the moment, then shakes his head to dispel the memory altogether. His hands move to his neck, touching a patch of his throat that is still a slightly bluer color than the rest of his skin. He presses on the circle, hard, until it finally starts to ache.

          “The hickey’s almost gone,” he says.

          Anna, who would usually either ignore or joke at the mention of her little brother’s sex life, reaches up and presses into a tear on his cheek. He flinches away from her, and she smiles.

          “The wounds are still there,” she points out, dropping her arm.

          He worries about what will happen when his skin has healed, but he doesn’t say anything.

          “Honey, trust me,” she says, leaning into him. “I brought you in here so you could look at yourself and try to shape up. Dean, you haven’t spoken more than four sentences since you got here a week ago, and Mary says you haven’t spoken to anyone in the family since you left. Sam says to afford you your grief time, but I’m worried that you’re going to drink yourself to death.”

          “I haven’t had a drink all day.”

          “You’ve got your sorrow scruff on,” she says, running a knuckle over his jaw. “I know you’ve been drinking nonstop since they released you from questioning last month.”

          He sighs. “Anna—”

          She laughs and throws her hands up, interrupting him. “Okay, okay. Don’t worry about it, I’m done with the impromptu therapy.” She pauses, probably casting around for an appropriate subject change. “Have you seen Gabriel?”

          Dean raises his eyebrows in something akin to interest, but not quite. “He made it?”

          “I think so. He said he was coming with B after the official ceremony, since they both still swear that they’ll burst into flame if they enter a church.”

          Dean almost smiles, before something registers. “Wait, who did you come with?”

          “I came alone,” she says, knitting her brow.

          “What about Uriel? Or Zachariah and Naomi?”

          Anna presses her lips together. She shakes her head.

          “Are you kidding me?” Dean says loudly. She doesn’t jump back, exactly, but her eyes widen and she leans away. “They couldn’t—they couldn’t get off their asses long enough to  come to their own—to show up to his—are you _kidding_ me?”

          Anna lays her hands on his arm to try to calm him down. He stops, chest heaving, and glares at a spot on the wall over her head.

          “When they cut someone out, they really go for it,” she says quietly. “When the police came to inform them, they all but slammed the door in their faces. Wouldn’t let us talk about it.”

          “But he was basically their son. For ten years, they fed him, they clothed him—he was _theirs_. How could they treat him like that?”

          She shrugs. “You’re preaching to the choir.”

          “Yeah, well, I guess evil doesn’t have closing hours,” he mumbles, turning back to the mirror.

          They are silent for a few beats. Dean glares into the glass; Anna encircles him with her arms and rests her chin on her shoulder, just a little too high, so that her head is tilted up at an awkward angle. She doesn’t seem inclined to move, though.

          Dean breaks the silence first.

          “D’you want to know the last thing I did?” he says bitterly. It’s not really a question, and Anna probably _doesn’t_ want to know, but she nods at him in the mirror. He has to catch his breath to reign in some of the self-hatred, but most of it escapes anyway.

          “I hit on the bartender,” he says, glaring at himself through the glass. “I hit on the fucking bartender. For cheaper drinks. And then I felt him up next to the bathroom and tried to take him home.”

          She smiles sympathetically and squeezes his midsection. “Dean, that’s a regular Friday night for you. That was the whole dynamic of your relationship. You—and don’t take this the wrong way—but that was kind of what you _did_. You were a little sleazy to benefit you both, and he was protective and bratty and loyal. But you always did what was best for each other. That’s how it’s always been.”

          He rolls his eyes. “I already know that I never deserved him, Anna. As a best friend or anything else.”

          “That’s not what I meant,” she says. “Don’t blame yourself for this, or for anything. He loved you, but not because you were the epitome of perfection. I’ve known you since you were seven, Dean. You’ve always been kind and selfless and slutty and rash and well-meaning and temperamental and angsty and loyal and dumb. _That’s_ why he thought you were perfect. You’re an idiot, but he thought all that crap made the sun shine out your ass.”

          He grumbles, not sure what to say to that. Not sure if he even agrees.

          “You have to stop hating yourself for this,” she says fiercely. “For everything. There was _nothing you could have done_. He knows that whatever you did, you didn’t mean any of it. He was the only person in the entire universe who knew more about how much you cared about him than I do. And I know more than I hoped to. So, just…tell me I’m the best and then shut up.”

          He pauses. “Thanks,” he says quietly. They fall back into silence, though where he feels uncomfortable, she looks perfectly at ease, head cradled in the dip of his shoulder, arms around his middle. He simultaneously hopes that they stay there forever and wishes that they would fall away.

          “So what are you going to do now?” she asks eventually.

          Dean looks away from where her shining blue eyes probe his in the mirror. He hates the way she says it, so confident, so easy, with too much finality. Her tone crystallizes everything that happened and presents it to him with a big red bow, promising that he can never reverse the past. When he arrives home again tomorrow, half of the apartment will be empty. Nothing is packed up, but there will be no one sprawled across the couch with a book, or sipping herbal tea by the counter, or furiously penning a novel at the desk in the bedroom—and there should be. He doesn’t know how he intends to face the expanse of the king bed, warm and inviting and so full of promise, yet cruel and sharp with half of it untouched.

          He doesn’t know what he’s going to do now, and he’s trying to formulate an answer that lacks his current pessimism and deflation. Everything he can think of to say sounds hollow. He opens his mouth, hoping that whatever comes out won’t be too desolate and pathetic, but before he can say anything, the bathroom door opens.

          The woman entering jolts, her thick brown bun wobbling on the back of her pristinely combed head. She stops cold. After a few seconds, however, she clears her throat and smooths down the creases of her pantsuit, then looks at the pair of them imperiously.

          “Young man, are you aware that this is a ladies’—” she begins, but then she properly looks at him, and she pauses again. “Dean?”

          Anna is a statue beside him, her arms long fallen from around his stomach. He glances at her, then starts to say something to the woman—an expression of gratitude for coming, a string of curses for her tardiness, he isn’t sure yet—when once again he is interrupted, this time by the young woman beside him.

          “You came,” says Anna, staring at her aunt like she is an eighth natural wonder, or like she’s suddenly decided to shoot geysers from every orifice, the force of which propel off her own head into the ceiling.

          Naomi raises her chin, looking down her nose at Anna, but her expression is softer than Dean has ever seen it.

          “Of course I came, Anna, don’t be ridiculous,” she says haughtily, but then her tone softens significantly. She strides over to Dean and clasps one of his hands in both of hers. She looks up at him through her lashes with an expression that aches for forgiveness, for penance. “He’s my son.”

          Dean doesn’t really know what to say to that. In all honesty, he is still angry with her for all that she put them through, and yet here she is, defying half of her family to come see him at the very end. It is too late, but it is still something.

          Instead of answering, Dean nods jerkily, pulling his hand from her grasp. He chokes out a gruff, “Thanks,” for the third time that day, then glances at Anna, begging for a savior.

She performs admirably, mumbling an excuse about privacy and pulling Dean along and out of the restroom. People stare as they exit, but they don’t dare say anything to Dean, not yet.

          By the time they reach where they were before, almost everyone has gone. Dean wants to be angry that they abandoned him—abandoned his _memory_ —so quickly, but he finds that he lacks the fire for the righteous anger. And he had sometimes called him his Righteous Man—so much for that now. Dean shakes his head, wondering if he’ll ever be good enough for him, even now.

          Anna brings him directly in front of the grave and then lets go of his arm. She waves a silent goodbye, seeming to understand the quiet atmosphere. Dean leans back on the headstone behind him, staring at the name etched in front of him.

          The Novaks gave him a stupid epitaph, some Bible verse that didn’t make sense at all, and seemed to have little to do with the penultimate brother. They didn’t even ask Dean for his input, although he probably wouldn’t have gone religious at all. He was more than the silver cross around his neck, but nobody else seemed to care; even Anna just shrugged, seeming to recognize that with this particular issue, any fight would be in vain.

          A horrible idea comes to him, and he knows he shouldn’t do it. Nevertheless, he finds a woman nearby and taps her shoulder, inquiring over a Sharpie. Surprisingly, she nods, and digs around in a seemingly-bottomless shoulder bag until she comes up with the permanent ink. He thanks her, wondering over the general strangeness of women, and returns to his previous post as she turns away. He crouches in the dirt for a moment, the end of the marker poised between his teeth, pondering what he wants to do.

          He recognizes that he has little power; whatever hold he had no longer applies, and never really did. No matter what they said to him, and what he chose to do, they were still his family, in the end. Dean has no real right to challenge their decisions in something so permanent.

          He sighs, his defiance dissipating. He reaches forward and scribbles a small picture in the corner of the gravestone, right next to where it says his name in deep block letters. It’s not much, just a star encased in a circle of flames. Dean found the little symbol while flipping through one of the many religious texts littered across the apartment. He sighs and recaps the pen.

          “For protection in the afterlife, little angel boy,” he whispers, and presses his lips to the headstone.

          When he draws back and climbs to his feet, he looks around for the woman from whom he borrowed the marker, but when he turns around he discovers Naomi, standing a few feet away and looking oddly strained.

          Dean blushes immediately. “I didn’t—” he begins, unsure where the sentence is going as he has no intention of apologizing, but she holds up a hand and speaks over him.

          “Thank you,” she says, apparently unfazed by Dean’s subsequent surprise. “For not writing over the epitaph.” She steps closer until they are shoulder to shoulder, and spins him so that they are both facing the freshly dug and resettled earth. “It’s a Bible verse. _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me_. Psalms 23:4.” She pauses; Dean resists pointing out all of the sexual undertones he can find in that verse, as she’s trying to be civil. “Even in death, he will be safe and happy. God is with him.”

          Dean is thankful that they at least didn’t choose the Romans 6:23 line that they apparently repeated after the fiasco in the warehouse, a warning and a threat. The Novaks, with their lack of virtues, at the very least don’t gloat as much as they could.

          “He felt that way in life, too. With me,” says Dean, unable to help himself. She cocks her head at him. He hastily casts around for a subject change before she can decipher his meaning.

          “You know,” he says, scuffing his shoes into the dirt at his feet, “That symbol I made is an anti-possession symbol. I found it in one of the books he left lying around. He was going to get it tattooed right above his waist.” He ignores the twitch her face makes at the thought of her surrogate son permanently marking himself, no matter how holy the drawing. “I wanted to keep him safe myself. A little assurance.”

          She appears to collect herself—probably reigning in her general distaste for her nephew’s best friend, Dean thinks. Then she says, “I’m sure he would appreciate that.”

          “Yeah.” Dean looks down at where his shoes are digging into the ground, wishing he could escape this conversation. When she doesn’t say anything else, he adds, “Thank you for coming. After everything…well, I’m just sure he would’ve appreciated you being here for him.” _Even if it is too late,_ he doesn’t say.

          She seems to hear the accusation between his words. “We did what we thought was right,” she sighs. Then she shakes her head. “Even if it wasn’t best for him. We thought…we thought we were doing the Lord’s work. But our mission was to _protect_ what God created. Even sinn—even people like you. I don’t know when we forgot that.”

          Dean stares at her, incredulous. “What the hell are you trying to say?”

          She sighs and looks away from him, off to the side where she doesn’t have to meet his eye, and pretends not to hear him. “But acceptance was always God’s intention. He would never have forsaken my son, just because…” _Just because of who he let touch his dick_ , Dean finishes mentally, remembering what he said to him two months after they kicked him out. “I should have stopped this path. When my husband was fighting with him, I should not have sided with him. When he wanted back in, I should have listened.”

          Dean narrows his eyes, not entirely prepared to believe her apology. Where was this attitude months ago? Where was this attitude in the days following the tragedy in the alleyway, when they slammed the door in the policemen’s faces?

          “Are you saying that the assholes responsible were wrong for doing this? Because of…who he is?”

          “I’m saying _I_ was wrong for treating him as I did. Because of who he was.”

          Dean looks away, shifting awkwardly. He wants to leave, but he isn’t sure how to do so tactfully. An _I told you so_ seems in order, but it doesn’t seem acceptable at the moment, especially when she’s being so kind, or at least as kind as Naomi knows how to act with people she doesn’t appreciate.

          “Uh, yeah, Naomi,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “I’m sure he would have, uhm, been psyched to hear that.”

          He doesn’t say, _too little, too late_ , but she seems to understand the message regardless. She nods, evidently having exhausted her store of truthfulness and goodwill.

          “I just wanted to pay my respects,” she says stiffly.

          Dean nods, too, and then backs away so that she can take her place in front of the grave, alone. She clasps her hands in front of her waist, bows her head, and mouths what he can only assume to be a prayer. When she finishes, she looks up at him for a second. Then she walks away.

          He watches her go, feeling his frozen insides fracture, just a little bit. He doesn’t exactly forgive her, but she’s trying. He blinks and turns back to the grave.

          He stands there and stares, not speaking, not even really thinking. Darkness begins to settle in around him. The last of the funeral-goers have long since left, even Charlie. The rest of the cemetery has pretty much cleared; he can see an older couple over twenty rows down, holding hands and walking and talking in undertones as they examine the graves.

          Dean sighs and settles a hand over the top of the headstone. It’s cold, colder than he imagined, for some reason. He knows it’s stone and that it’s been out in the misty December, but somehow he thought that it would be warm and glowing, like the body was that lies beneath it. He has to get back soon, as his flight leaves a little after midnight, but he doesn’t want to leave. He almost never gets to visit Kansas, and he knows that he won’t be able to come back for awhile. Although he has to box up half of his possessions, and he has to downsize his apartment, and he has so many other Lasts (as opposed to the usual Firsts that people experience), he doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to leave him. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to come back.

          The sun sets around five o’clock that afternoon, just as the sky opens and the clouds begin to drizzle. Dean ignores the darkening sky as the night descends around him. He settles himself in the dirt, ignoring the fact that his mother specifically bought him an expensive three-piece suit for this occasion, ignoring the fact that by seven, everyone around him has gone home.

          He sits there, unfocused and with tears coursing down his cheeks, for a long time. He doesn’t move, and only when he feels a hand settle on his shoulder does he finally look up.

          At first, he can barely focus on anything, and he’s aware of a dull ache in his temple that warns him he’s been trying to see in the dark for too long. However, his eyes eventually bring someone into view, with red hair and a sympathetic smile that he doesn’t want to see.

          “I dropped Dorothy at the hotel,” Charlie says quietly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s changed into more comfortable clothes, and has on the glasses she wears when she plans to settle in for the night. “The night watchman wanted me to tell you that the gates are closing soon.”

          Dean stares numbly at the hand she extends, then turns back to the grave. When he speaks for the first time in hours, his voice comes out harsh and cracked, even through his whisper.

          “Goodnight, Cas.”

          He takes Charlie’s hand and lets her pull him up from the ground. He doesn’t turn around as they walk hand-in-hand out of the empty graveyard and out into the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the verse I was talking about was this one: “For the wages of sin are death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” –Romans 6:23
> 
> (also, I had to Google Bible verses about death. So--yeah.)


End file.
